Ranger Fox

That's about the gist of it. Until Groundspeak releases it as a new feature, I'll handle all statbar requests. If you want the NNYGeo logo on the Statbar Modifier, you'll have to tell me which you want: the one on your forum with the dark trees or the one on the NNYGeo homepage, linked from there. I can add both, too. The Statbar Modifier fixes two other things: clipped user quotes and clipped user handles. While the former is automatic, the latter is on a per user basis because my application is simply editing the image. My goal is to have every logo anyone could possibly want on the Statbar Modifier, so don't be afraid to request a logo. I'm keeping with Groundspeak's policy of review because I don't want indecent or corporate logos posted on the application. I also want to make sure the logos work before releasing them. If the number of logos gets to be too many to show, I'll simply break it down alphabetically (all I have to do is change the logo listing text file and that's that). The scripting on the site is done so that only the logos you see are requested by your browser at the time; the other logos are only requested when you click on that particular accordion pane. That helps with bandwidth. As for the future, I met with Jeremy at GW5 and he sounded interested, asking if I could email a proposal to him. I'm asking for a few web services to get user handles, find and hide count, and the find and hide count by cache type. I'm shooting for a fully customizable statbar with optional find/hide breakdown sections. Something like the following logo (in fact, this one was one of the first successful tests I made of the new Statbar Modifier system): Note the following will be optional in the above: background; logo; font color, size, and face; positioning (I'm trying to decide how I will limit it); and the user quote. Also note I have since added the GPS Adventures cache type to the new system. Of course, comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

I am also interested in a web service, but one which provides the cacher's handle, find count, and hide count. Some weeks ago, I emailed a lackey to pass along this request to Groundspeak. My interest in such a matter deals with the Statbar Modifier service I created, which takes a user's live gc.com statbar, puts the user's or organization's logo on it, adjusts the width to accommodate for larger user quotes, and reapplies the black border. I developed it because there was a demand for such a service and someone made a request to me in person. The service is free and available to everyone and anyone can email me to add a G-rated logo. My goal is to continue developing the Statbar Modifier to the point where it rivals the terracaching one: nice background images and the user's stats at a user-defined place within the image. To do so, I need a text-based way of getting those three pieces of information via a user's GUID. A web service would be ideal.

I, too, noticed the '%' wildcard had been "removed" from use on the seek page (or, really, the percent literal was being used and not the percent wildcard). I was making use of that quite a lot because I could remember bits and pieces of the cache title (or didn't know if the title was plural), but not the entire thing. Perhaps this removal was due to SQL injection concerns? If it was removed due to performance concerns, I'm at a loss for a faster way to compare strings while using wildcards. It's either using LIKE with the full user's string or CHARINDEX within an array of search terms (split by wildcard because you don't know how many wildcards will be used before runtime). You're still comparing against strings, so I really can't see too much of a performance gain from transforming the percent wildcard to a percent literal. Even with a form that would have the AND and OR operands available to users with which to use to seek caches by title, you would still have to come up with a way to use wildcards in the stored proc nonetheless. So, really, no help there and I'm at a loss for how else to do that via the stored proc. As I said, if LIKE was out due to performance, CHARINDEX is most assuredly out by the same coin--and I don't know what's left. It's much faster and efficient to do string comparison via the database than it is under .Net. You also don't have as much network use when sending the dataset to .Net from SQL Server. If the wildcard "removal" was due to SQL injection concerns, a simple programmatic test could have been applied before the string would be used. This would detect any other sort of misuse while allowing the wildcard to pass. Well, anyway, this is what I have pondered thus far. After all, this is my field, too.

I'll look into it, but my understanding is htaccess is part of Apache. I'll see what I can do to find a different solution using .Net. If anyone has suggestions for how I can implement something like htaccess on IIS without configuring the web server itself, I'll take it. Once I'm happy with how everything works on the back end, I'll look into making it pretty. As for bandwidth, I have unlimited bandwidth on one of my other domains, but the web hosting company imposes many more restrictions on code operations. I'm trying to find a workaround. Why unlimited bandwidth? Old web hosting contract.

The stat bar doesn't show up because it's a dynamic image and forbidden by the forum software. I was thinking of a way of circumventing it, but laziness overcame me. It's enough to discover a way around the "no JavaScript file references" in the gc.com profile page, though I'm still trying to find an onload event handler for that. Anyway, I suspect that's why no one shows his/her gc.com stat bar in the forum, from what little I have seen. And, yes, alto, I'll format what I have later, perhaps adding the same JavaScript I gave you. I was in a hurry to do the first one (as proof-of-concept) and simply used Anthem AJAX instead of rigging proper JavaScript. Laziness? Perhaps hurried. I have caches to log, other things to program, and people calling me up asking to do stuff or help them. Where's another FTF opportunity when you need it?

I'd say it's okay to log your own cache if you are the owner of a DeLorme Challenge cache or something else dependent upon a feat other than finding the cache.

Just send me the URL of whatever you want as you logo image, but try to make it a 46-48 pixel high JPEG if you can; it'll save a minute or two on editing. You'll receive an email when I'm finished. Same with everyone else. I'll keep this up until Groundspeak builds this feature into gc.com or until they tell me to knock it off. To answer one other unasked question, I thought of creating an upload feature to allow others to upload icons, but I'd rather act as filter against anything that isn't rated "G".

I rarely enter the forums (this is my third visit), but I did to get the stat box's history. Thanks for the info. In fact, a cacher asked me yesterday about getting his organization's logo on the stat bar. I told him it was possible to do and designed something on one of my domains to provide him with that functionality. I also created code that makes it easy to add more images. http://www.devfolio.com/geocaching/statbar So, yes, that functionality among other things seem to be in demand by gc.com users. So is the JavaScript I use on my profile page. Heck, with a user's click, it's possible to bypass Groundspeak's security and load external JavaScript files (though I would prefer Scriptaculous and Rico be one of the standard includes). There are so many things end users can do to enhance gc.com. I'm just doing my part. If you want to create the stat box yourself, here's my estimate of gc.com's program flow: Make a bitmap object, instantiate the graphic object off the bitmap, draw the logo on the right, format the cacher's name to include the apostrophe and evaluate the "s", query the finds and hides, do the query string for the user's text, draw all three strings on the graphic object at about x=50, draw four lines to serve as the box's border, and render to the output stream, changing the content type. .Net is so fun! It's what I do for a living, anyway, so I'm proud to enjoy it. The following is static because I didn't have time to find a way to get the reference to work in forum posts:

I don't know about that. My concern is hiding it in such a way that kids retrieving the real thing--baseballs hit out of the park--would not find it. When people look for foul or home run balls, they tend to search like a geocacher. It would be a challenge to hide it in such a way that only geocachers can find it. I am also concerned about, now that I think about it, how the ball cache would last through the elements. I have seen baseballs and softballs that were found the year after, and they "went foul". You'll have to find a way to keep the cache from decomposing--or you could replace the cache every so often. Good luck.

I've seen some of the hollowed-out variety as well. One interesting one was an 18" decaying log. The top 5" unscrewed to reveal the inside of a pipe, which had been glued to the inside of the log. I have come up with my own hiding method based on what I have seen so far. I truly believe in the GPSr's EPE as a potential hiding mechanism. That said, I will normally place my hides within EPE of more "interesting" places, such as piles of felled trees, lots of sticks or rocks, etc. The cache will not be in any of that; in fact, it will be more accessible. My latest cache is a nitro bottle inside a bamboo stick, which is hidden under a log near a bunch of downed trees. After a number of DNFs, I went out to check on the cache and ended up playing the "Who's Closer to the Cache" game with two cachers. Everything I will create will have some trick to it, be it using the EPE to my advantage, landscaping issues, or putting a key piece of information in a special location. I have to be mindful of people trying to think like the hider. Do I decide not to use the same trick twice, or do I make an exception to the rule to shake people up? I just have to keep clear of my hides being labeled as "evil". But no matter what, I will NEVER do the micro-in-a-fir-tree (though I never said I wouldn't put the micro somewhere near the trees).

I had a completely different introduction to geocaching. Some years ago, I read on some forum or news site a box was found under a bridge. The police called in the bomb squad and performed the usual preparations and procedure. The box was a geocache; you probably guessed. The article glossed over geocaching, simply mentioning it as an activity that involved people using GPS receivers to find various hidden items. I thought it was interesting, filed the term away in memory, and went on to whatever I was doing at the time. It wasn't until this April that I came back to the topic of geocaching. I was bored and very exhausted from programming both at work and in my spare time. I was waiting for my friend to finish talking with his girlfriend, so I grabbed his laptop and went to random sites. I remembered the term "geocaching" and decided looking it up would be a good way to waste time. How ironic. I found geocaching.com, looked up which caches were close to my area (I thought it would be three or four), and saw the place littered with them (more than eighty). That seemed interesting. I brought up a few cache descriptions and it just added to the appeal. I decided to give it a try, researched which GPS to buy (60CSx), downloaded the waypoints, and passed the 100 cache mark within a month of starting.