CrystalFairy

Anyone got a solution to the names not appearing on the 62s for geocaching. Have the same issue.. If I use a "geocache" symbol as a waypoint, then it displays, but anything geocaching based only shows icons..

Depends on the dates as we will be in Swaziland in the middle of October (so if it co-incides on either side) we might be able to make a trip "via" Nelspruit.. The last one was great fun even with the slip and slides and torn pants.

Hi All We will be in New Zealand (most of North Island) between the 7th of September and the 2nd of October and were hoping to meet up with some local geocachers who could give us some tips and hints about where to go and what to see. We are from South Africa. If you have some free time during this period we would love to meet up with you. If you are interested please let us know. Thanks in advance Andrew & Heidi CrystalFairy geo@crystalfairy.co.za

Just our two cents worth... Having recently (1 month ago) become a statistic in Gauteng we are also much more "picky" about where we go and when we go and who we go with.. We love "safe caches" and would rather pay a small entrance fee to know we are safe and don't have to keep looking over our shoulders. Big groups also make us "feel" safer and caches located in "nice places", and not just neccessarily any green belt that does not have a cache.. We have been reviewing our caches and are slowly removing the ones we don't feel are safe any more.. If you want nice area, the Pretoria area is great, the Magaliesberg is awesome (but expect some serious climbs) as well as Cullinan and Parys (juts outside).. There are a lot of new caches being placed towards Rustenberg.. After our event two days ago there will 38 new caches in and around the mindrand area ranging from Micro to Regular and almost all of them are in very safe environments.. That said, have a great day. CrystalFairy.

With this last event and setting it up being so Hairy Our time at setting up stats on CrystalFairy And our occurance with men and guns who us Robbed I have now setup Bats Gone Mad and Mr Bob. Hope you all enjoy the site And thanks to all of you to help make it Right.

Hi Everyone Just a quick followup for those interested.. a ) absolutely no response from Groundspeak after 24 hours. b ) yes GetAway have seen the thread (not sure if they read it actively) and the guy who wrote the article will be contacting me today to give me his sources for the article. c ) if anyone here wants to start another thread in the forum where everyone can club together to write something that can be used in "all" future magazine / print / tv that explains the rules and what geocaching is all about that would be great. In this way all future issues of this sort will be eliminated.. Just my thoughts.. Andrew

We are in contact with Groundspeak and will let everyone know shortly what they decide.. Thanks for all the support from the people out there .. We really appreciate it and we sincerely hope that the event will go ahead with the support of Geocaching.com.. Sincerely Andrew & Heidi

Post Duplicated...

Hi Everyone I'd like to set the record straight here before this gets way out of hand... 1) The article in the magazine was not even shown to us before it was published. There are TWO sets of articles in the magazine.. The one about geocaching with their three example caches we saw when we purchased the magazine and were HORRIFIED when we read the article.. Its written awfully, and I have no idea where they got the content from as we certainly never gave them any of it (especially about the knives and jewellery).. If you also look at the caches listed they refer to an area of 1km x 1km in some of them and knew nothing about these or what is in the containers or even where they are. 2) The second article about the event we saw about 1 week before the magazine came out and showed them some mistakes and were told it had already gone to press and could not change it.. 3) About the event. It is a "geocaching event" .. Its going to be like all our past events we have held. There are three sponsors to the event "Mitsubishi", "MapIT" and "GetAway". Each of them are sponsoring the containers, the log books, and most of the goodies in the caches as well as the food on the day before and after the event as well as a 3 month subscription to GetAway or WegBreek Magazine. For those who want to know the details, you are welcome to contact me. It works out there is a surplus of R10 per team of 2, R20 per team of 3 and R30 per team of 4. This doesn't even come close to covering the costs of the goodies we are adding and the 3 tanks of Disel we use in setting up the event (R1800). So we will leave you with the following.. Those who want to participate, we are sure you will have a ball of a time, and for those of you who think its "rigged", you are not being forced to attend and you may freely do the published caches after the event in your own time for FREE. The two main points of the event are a) socialisation - to get cachers together before and after the event to chat, tell stories, swap TB's and Coins etc. introduce a whole new market of people out there with GPS's to the sport of geocaching.. GetAway Magazine was trying to promote the sport of geocaching to their readers, but they certainly didn't come to us for the content of the article. I am meeting with them on Monday morning and will allay all our (and your) concerns about the articles published... We hope this allays all your fears and hope to see you at the event on the 31st May. Sincerely CrystalFairy

Pretty impressive... Bit slow to use compared to Map Source, but pretty good... Still doesn't have road closure :-) though ... Works very nicely in the City, but very poor street coverage outside the City - eg Pilansberg Nature Reserve and surrounds have almost no roads... But a good alternative...

Yup thats right the first one is on a Saturday and the second on a Sunday :-) The sponsors chose the dates ....

Ive been using T4A for about 2 years now and its amazing.. All the hiking routes, 4x4, game drives, etc are on these.. But remember in South Africa these are not Routable... They are also very reasonably priced...

Hi All Congrats to everyone who reached their milestones in the last few months.. Don't get nearly as much time as we would like to read the forums so hope you all accept the belated congrats.. Cheers CrystalFairy

Hi Everyone This is a short post to tell you all to diarise the following dates. 31st May 2008 and 31st August 2008. We will be setting up two events and have the BIG sponsors on board already. We will be posting the details in the next few weeks, but for now block out those days on your calendar.. Both events will be held within 80km of Jhb (probably even closer to 20 to 40 km) so there are no excuses for not participating. Hope to see all you old and new cachers there.... You won't be dissapointed.. Andrew and Heidi Crystal Fairy

Hi As our offices have closed and I now have some free time, is there anyone out there that would like to join me caching on Wed 19th December. I want to head out towards the Pretoria area but do a relaxed day of caching.. So if anyone is keen either drop me an email on geo@crystalfairy.co.za or call me on 083-305-8341 Cheers Andrew (Crystal part of CrystalFairy)

If you are prepared to maintain the caches and they are at nice spots why not publish them... We have done so for the last 3 events we published and comparing them to all our other caches, these get far more finds and very nice reponses.. Make up your own mind...

Hi Guys We normally attempt about 8 to 12 caches in a good days caching, but have slowed down to 4 or 5 these days to spend more time at the locations... With the exception of this last event in Magoebaskloof we did 43 caches + 3 DNF's in 6 hours... But I can't tell you much about the caches, so we will definitely go back and visit the area again... Don't worry about the numbers. Go to the places you want to see and enjoy the scenery, views, people, places.. The caches arn't going anywhere, so if you do one a day youll be able to cache for a good few years to come :-) CrystalFairy

I find it quite interesting... A year + ago when we started out caching we went on a caching trip in Ireland and New York and decide to place one there (before we knew about maintenance etc) and hid one in Ireland off the ring of Kerry.. Usual Lock and Lock container with plastic bag and then blag plastic bag and then hidden under some rocks near a fort. Anyways after finding a maintainer in Ireland we decided to publish it and in the comments I wrote something to the effect.. usual lock and lock in plastic bag, with logbook etc... and it came back the next day - DECLINED.. In order to publish a cache in Ireland YOU CANNOT put it in a plastic bag (as this a) hurts the environment and is dangerous to little children (who might put them over their heads!) ... So to cut the story short we got the maintainer to go there and remove the plastic bags and he told us that in 3 weeks the entire cache was filled with water.. So he replaced the container with an Ammo Box... So it looks like each place has its own rules about plastic and boxes and each country has very different weather conditions and muggle conditions.. My two cents added...

Hi Guys Updated all our 100+ caches yesterday.. Did take too long except working out the boundaries.. Its amazing how many caches not even 10km apart fall into different areas.. We have four in Ezemvelo and 2 are in Gauteng and 2 are in Mpumalanga... Anyways also found the problem with GSAK and the Pocket Queries and posted a note on the forum early this morning... Hopefully they will fix it shortly... Its definitely on the Pocket Query downloads only... Question : Do we need to /Can we actually update Archived caches or not ? Dont really see them online, but they appear in GSAK... Any comments on this one ? Done... 5% of South Africa's caches updated ;-) Andrew CrystalFairy.

Hi Andy Assembler, Cobol, Basic, DBase, Xbase, Clipper - All died a while ago Visual Basic, Delphi, C#, C++ - Still around for PC based applications. Perl, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET - The stuff used most of the time to develop web based applications. I think PHP and ASP.NET and Java are the three main ones used today and then C#, VB and Delphi next. Enjoy Cheers Andrew

Hi I have a number of pocket queries and since the recent addition of States / Prvinces in South Africa on the site, when I get the GPX files all the "state" fields are "Nil" or "None" even if the cache has a province loaded... Can this please be fixed... Im sure its just a simple issue to resolve Thanks in advance Cheers Andrew (Crystal Fairy)

Interesting.. Wonder who put this in there, Same content I uploaded to some sites, but never added it there... And this is a really good example of what spell checking can do to an article !!! Anyways we are at 34 teams and 107 people and still growing at the last moment...

Hi All Okay good news... Buffet breakfast can be organised.. But need numbers ... Cost R45 per person includes everything you can think of :-) ... Please let me know via email "geo@crystalfairy.co.za" if you want breakfast or not . Thanks in advance CF

Hi All We (CF) will be staying over the night before and so 6am would probably be the earliest to arrive - though 7am should be fine for everyone.. We will probably be setting up still, so you might get roped into helping out. As for "bonus" caches - there are NONE of the existing caches in the area on the list of caches.. So they are all new.. And none are nearly as long and exhausting as North West Best View. :-) There are a few "toughies" and there are a few "urban" one - youll be surprised how "urban" the area around there has become... If you pick the tough ones, you may only get through 1 or 2 in an hour, but the easier ones should give you 4 to 6 an hour... But that doesn't mean (or does it) that you can't win doing only 4 difficult caches vs 18 easy ones ...Ill leave that up to you to wait until the event is over... 32 teams and 96 people so far... Come on lets break that 100 people barrier... Cheers CF

Hi We will for those with non USB compatible devices supply a page with the co-ords for all the waypoints and caches... I'm warning you in advance you will probably need at least an HOUR to enter them all!! So if you know you are going to do manual entry, please make sure you arrive VERY EARLY !!! CF