cezanne

Je crois qu'Alex parle d'un chantier (Baustelle en allemand). Cezanne

If you are still interested, you might also ask in the Austrian geocaching forum http://austrian-geocacher.com (subsection "Wir cachen gemeinsam", i.e. "We cache together). There is a group of Styrian geocachers (they all speak English) who plan to do this cache on Sunday if the weather allows it http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...9e-86fbc4da2e01 On their way they would cross the latitude you are interested into. I guess a photograph from that area would be a very attractive choice in comparison with more urban places. Cezanne

I'm claiming no mathematician would use the notation: N 40° 07.(A+D)(D+1)D W 020° 20.(B+A)A(C+D) ..... What you write now is certainly true, but what you wrote previously was something different. My objection was against that claim - such a notation provided that x, y and z are digits is common practice in mathematics. I already wrote in my first statement that the version with parentheses and more complex terms like the one arising in the OP is formally incorrect (unless it is defined prior to being used). Replacing the terms inside the parentheses by variables and removing the parentheses results, however, again in a valid expression, and that was the point of my first posting in this thread. As the 07.(A+D)(D+1)D example is regarded, what I said was only that multiplication behind the decimal point is not defined. This implies that those who believe that multplying the terms inside the parentheses is something which is mathematically correct are wrong anyway. Cezanne

You should re-read the expression given for understanding the purpose of the 60. I had read your formulae already at my first reading, but as you did not add units of measurement (degrees, minutes etc), I misinterpreted what you wrote as I focussed only on the second part (not the degree part which has no influence on the issue). For the discussion of whether 7.xyz is a valid mathematical notation (which it is and you could not come up with a convincing counter-argument) it plays no role whatsoever which units are involved. Combining the degree part with the minutes part does not contribute to the issue at the heart of this discussion. Do you still claim that no mathematician would use a notation like 0.a_1a_2a_3.... with a_i being variables? (Do you really want to say that this would be written all the time as infinite series??) BTW: The notation N 40.07.345 which seems to be used by some cachers here for N 40° 07.345' is no valid mathematical notation whatsoever as there do not exist numbers with two decimal points. (I am aware of the fact that points are used as separation signs in many places, for example quite often when the input format of some numbers is specified, but this does not mean that this is a valid mathematical notation and the issue here is about mathematical correctness.) Cezanne

With all due respect, that's simply not true. Arithmetic operations are not regularly combined with string-rewriting in the mish-mash you suggest. Yes constants are added together with expressions, and string rewriting systems exist which are designed to carry out logical operations (which is how you prove many of the advanced theorems of logic like Godel's theorem), but when they are combined, there are combined in an unambiguous notation with definitions. I did not say that the notation with parentheses which was part of the OP's question is formally correct. But 07.xyz with x,y and z being digits is a formally correct mathematical notation. I am not writing this from the point of view of geocaching, but from being a professional mathematician. I objected because you wrote that no one would use a notation like 7.xyz which is simply not true. This notation is needed (and used) in mathematics (I am talking about the science mathematics here and not about the sort of arithmetics which occurs in the daily life of most people) on a routine basis (both in teaching and research at university level). [it is straightforward to come up with hundreds of examples which demonstrate that I am right and what you claim is wrong. Sentences like "Let 0.a_1a_2a_3a_4 .... (a_i is shorthand for a with index i) be the decimal representation of the number x" are standard and they even occur in simple calculus exams on the undergraduate level.] Whether you have 7.345 or 7.xyz with x=3, y=4 and z=5 or a.xyz with a=7 and x, y, z as in the second case, makes no difference at all since mathematicians do not care about mixing constants and variables in a single term as long as everything fits together. The underlying convention in all cases is the standard notation for decimal numbers. The situation would change, of course, if the numbers are not with respect to the base 10 and this fact is not mentioned somewhere). The type of argument you were giving would mean that you could not write 4.56, but would have to explain each time that this means 4+5*10^{-1}+6*10^{-2} which is simply crazy. (BTW: In your explanation you used division by 60 which is a second mistake in your previous posting since if the minutes are giving as decimal minutes as it was the case in the given example you need to convert with 10 and 100. I do know that some cachers argued that it might be part of the puzzle to use the decimal notation and mean something else, but I am talking about mathematical correctness and I do not care at all about various forms of puzzles.) Clearly almost all standard notations are based on some sort of convention (even using natural numbers and what addition, subtraction means etc). Similarly, the number pi needs to be defined once, however, it is standard to use it without defining it all the time. The same holds true for the example with 07.xyz I came up with above. Cezanne (PS: If correctness is important for you, you should write Gödel or G"odel (in case you do not know the ASCII-code of the letter ö) when you are refererring to a theorem of Kurt Gödel and not a person called Godel. Changing ö into o makes a significant difference.)

You are wrong. 07.xyz is of course a correct mathematical notation provided that x,y and z are digits and not objects that could not be placed behind the decimal point without prior definition (like trees, matrices, integrals whatever). In mathematical notation constants and variables are mixed all the time - this is daily routine (also with an infinite number of digits behind the decimal point as this is needed to represent fractions which do not have a finite expansion in the chosen number system). Since multiplication behind the decimal point is not defined, it would be definitely wrong to visit the coordinates N 40° 07.8 in case N 40° 07.xyz' is to be visited and x=1 y=2 and z=4 N 40 ° 07.124' is the only correct solution in that case. The version with parentheses and more complex epressions like (A+D) instead of a single variable is not formally correct - it typically is used as a kind of short-hand notation instead of introducing new variables for the blocks inside the parentheses. In any case, multiplying the terms behind the decimal comma is a much stronger abuse of notation that just pasting together the components. Cezanne

You have to be logged in for a "view" to be tied to your listing. And as others have pointed out, folks can use pocket queries to get them without showing up on an audit log anyway. Since cache listings can be viewed without being forced to create an account and log in, all the audit log would do is show listings that are viewed by logged in users. I do plan to add the ability for cache owners to make their caches available only to logged in users. In this case audit logs would make sense. In this way you will, however, kind of force cachers who do not feel comfortable with that to open up additional sort of sock puppet accounts just to avoid that other cachers get into possession of sensitive data like who has viewed which cache and at which time. (This data can be made available whereever the owner of the audit log wishes and for whatever purpose, also for evil ones.) I feel that the combination of alias+exact time when a cache has been looked at is already too much to offer to individual users. I am aware of the fact that MOCs already offer such spying methods, but fortunately there almost no MOCs in my area. Cezanne

Bon, je ne connais pas les caches de jipebe91, mais pour moi le type/la taille (la qualité) de récipient ne jouent pas aucun rôle. Pour moi il suffit que le contenu reste sec. Je n'ai pas besoin de échanger des choses. Ça m'énerve plutot. J'utilise aussi souvent des petits récipients, indépendant du l'endroit. Je sais que les enfants aiment échanger des choses, mais mes caches ne s'adressent pas aux enfants. Mon objectif en cachant des boites c'est de montrer de beaux endroits aux autres cacheurs et/ou de leur faire remarquer des choses intéressantes et/ou de leur offre un défi particulier. Je sais qu'il y a beaucoup de grands TBs, mais ce n'est pas nécessaire que toute cache est apte pour les TBs. Je crois que j'avais trouvé assez des caches pour être capable d'avoir un avis sur ce sujet. Cezanne

Non, mais il y a des régles sur des cistes qui emêchera souvent d'offre un geocache comme ciste. Pas mal de caches que je connais se trouvent dans des endroits difficiles d'accès. Y-a-t-il aussi des cistes ou le défi principal est physique? Cezanne

Je me demande s'il y a aussi des geocacheurs féminins dans le monde francophone. Je ne parle pas de femmes qui accompagnent "seulement" un geocacheur masculin qui est la force vive. Cezanne

Apparement je suis trop stupide pour comprendre le principe de cette cache. Je ne peux pas trouver aucune description. J'aimerais voir des exemples des tâches qui attendaient les cacheurs. J'ai jeté un coup d'oeil sur les rapports des trouveurs, mais c'était assez énervant pour moi parce qu'ils sont presque tous écrits en flamand. En outre, les trouveurs ne peuvent pas parler sur les détails de cache. Egalement je ne pouvais pas trouver des informations sur www.geocaching.be, au moins pas en français (je n'ai pas cherché dans la partie flamande). Cezanne

C'est assez normal dans mon avis pour une cache en France (même en Alsace). Heureusement, on ne parle pas allemand partout. Cezanne

Je suis assez sûre que c'est contre les "guidelines" de faire une réstriction de participation ("des cacheurs venants de toutes les pays qui ont participés") sur un event-cache. Il n'y a pas de réstriction de participation (voir aussi la déscription d'event-cache). Il est certainement permis d'écrire "On sérait très honoré ...." Tu peux aussi écrire "Je serais très honoré d'acceuillir des cachers venant du Finlande". sans exclure les cachers venant d'Autriche par exemple. Cezanne

Je crois ça dépend de la difficulté des énigmes. La région est indiquée dans la liste qu'on utilise pour choisir des cistes (par exemple: Génève ou Jura). Pour plus de détails il faut malheureusement utiliser la description. J'ai seulement jeté un coup d'oeil sur trois ou quatre cistes. J'ai été assez deçue par la qualité médiocre ou mauvaise de cettes cistes. Par example, la seule ciste à Vienne s'est basée sur une énigme banale et la ciste est cachée dans une soclé 'un réverbère. Tres ennuyant dans mon avis. Bien sûr il y a aussi des cistes plus interessantes, mais quand même je préfère le geocaching parce qu'il offert plus de liberté. Cezanne

Tout à fait. Moi aussi je n'aime pas du tout cet aspect du site des cistes. Ce que c'est encore pire c'est le fait que le nom/pseudonym de chaque personne qui demande la description d'une ciste est indiqué sur la page de cette ciste. Pour moi un autre inconvénient des cistes est la restriction suivante (faites attention aux mots imprimés en gras): Cela exclut pas mal de caches formidables, strictement parlant presque toutes caches en montagnes. Je peux lire et comprendre les énigmes (c'est beacoup plus facile pour moi qu'écrire en français), mais pourtant je n'aime pas du tout l'idée des cistes. Personellement je ne partage pas cet avis. On peut trouver presque toute cache sans un GPS - c'est seulement souvent plus difficile. Pour cette raison on ne peut pas faire une séparation entre "un GPS est nécessaire" et "un GPS n'est pas nécessaire". Cezanne

Quel radar? Cette cache ne se trouve pas loin de la frontière entre la France et l'Allemagne. Je n'aimerais pas un règle strict sur la distance maximum entre une cache et le domicile de cacher. Prenez aussi les caches en hautes montagnes. Personne ne peut pas expecter une maintenance immédiate dans tous les cas. Cezanne

Mais combien de cachers s'occupent de tels détails dans leur propre région? Je dois avouer que je ne visite pas une de mes caches uniquement parce qu'il y a un trou dans un sac de plastique ou parce que quelq'un trouve qu'il y a trop ou trop peu de choses dans la boite etc Dans cette manière il serait impossible pour moi d'avoir plusieurs caches. Alice a des amis à Cernay. Ils peuvent s'occuper de la cache s'il y a un problème grave. Cezanne

Ça dépend. Personellement, je préfere une description uniquement en anglais à une description uniquement dans une autre langue que l'anglais. Pour moi la meilleure solution c'est d'utiliser la langue du pays et l'anglais, ç'est à dire le français et l'anglais aus cas de la France quand ce sera possible. Je ne suis pas capable d'apprendre toutes les langues du monde entier. Il y déjà trop de langues des pays voisins d'Autriche. Je suis très malhereuse par exemple avec la situation en Hongrie. Bien sûr que non, mais je ne regarde pas l'anglais comme langue natale des gens en Grande Bretagne ou aux Etats Unis, mais comme première langue internationale. Je rédige mes publications scientifiques en anglais, mais pas pour faire plaisir aux gens avec l'anglais comme langue maternelle. Cezanne

Pourquoi? Je connais beaucoup de Français qui parlent l'anglais couramment. J'offre toutes mes caches en anglais et en allemand, mais beaucoup de caches en Autriche sont offertes exclusivement en anglais. Il y a pas mal de geocacheurs qui n'aiment pas ecrire en plusieurs langues parce que de cette manière les descriptions des caches deviennent souvent assez prolongées. Pour cette raison ce serait très chouette d'avoir une possibilité de commuter entre les langues qui sont offertes. Je m'excuse pour mon pauvre français. Cezanne

I agree. However, multicaches are often more difficult because of what you have to do at each stop, e.g., to find some information or even a container with a hint further to the next stop, and not because of the trips between the stops. For those searching delays, the terrain rating should not be used. I fully agree with you, but I understood your original posting in a different way. As I do not like hikes which become 3 hours longer because the overall searching time is that long, I appreciate it very much if the difficulty rating accounts for the extra time due to searching. The trouble, however, is that if one uses ClayJar's form, then clicking yes for "multi leg" already results in a difficulty rating of 3* independently of your other answers. In such cases the result 3* can be in heavy contradiction to the "definition" of 3* which one gets as the output when using ClayJar's form. It means that already a multi cache with 2 stages both of which are very easy gets a rating of 3* which will not be appropriate in that case. Nevertheless, there are cachers who claim that any multi cache needs to be rated with 3* or higher because they base their rating on the output of the form and not on the description of the various ratings which come along with the suggestion for the rating. Cezanne

I think that just resembles the idea that the difficulty rating should be based on the time required to find a cache. If there are several places to go, it can hardly be less time-consuming than a single-stop cache of rating 3. I have not yet found a single cache in Finland, but I would like to comment on your statement nevertheless since I do not agree with it. I think that the difficulty rating should account for the difficulty related with finding the cache(s) (including all intermediary stages of a cache with more than one stage), but it makes no sense to account for the time needed for going from one Stage to the next. This should be accounted for in the terrain rating. A multi cache with 4 stages which spans over 25 kilometers in the Alps where every stage is very easy to find (within the first minutes or even immediately), should not be rated with 3*. Moreover, I cannot see a difference between a traditional cache which makes me to hike up a mountain which cannot be reached by car, cable car, etc and where the round hike takes eight hours to a multi cache which spans the same distance and where one has to collect some numbers on one or several intermediary stages - for, example, some data from the summit cross which one has to pass anyway. Moreover, there exist multi cache which are almost like traditionals - go to place A and move from there x meters into direction y degrees. If I go for a long hiking cache, it is very important for me to know how tricky the hideouts are - often one can estimate the walking time conveniently, but not the time needed for searching. If the rating of multi caches start at 3*, the rating does not have any reasonable meaning any longer. If we start to account for the time for moving both in the difficulty rating and the terrain rating, we will end with a big fuss. Already now too many different things are measured with the help of a single number. Cezanne

But from my point of view it is definitely Germany-dominated ..... I guess I did not manage to get my point through. Participation in those forums is one thing, but it is not a good place for informing oneself about geocaching trends and attitudes in Europe. I am missing such a place. Most countries in Europe either have separate national forums or are ignored by gc.com. I just would like to learn more about geocaching outside of the US and outside Germany. It seems that you misinterpreted what I tried to say. I know that the Finnish geocachers are very open towards foreigners and their need - for example, much more open than many German geocachers. So everything what I wrote was not to be seen as any sort of complaint. I apologize if it looked even like a mild form of criticism - this was not intended at all. I live much too far from Scandinavia to be specifically interested into special topics (maps for Finnland etc.) Hence my interest into starting topics here is typically too low. My personal impression is just that a while ago I was able to get a gist of the type of topics which are discussed here more easily. I used to like looking at the Scandinavian forum because I appreciate the different style of looking at things than the one which is predominant for example in the German-speaking forums. My focus here is reading not writing. I can well accept that the discussions by Finns take place in Finnish. It is natural from their point of view in most cases. I hope that I finally managed to explain what I tried to say right from the beginning. Cezanne

They are rare if you only talk about those where all the postings from a certain one onwards have been in Finnish. ´ It was just an impression I got. I did not make a search like you. Regarding the switch to Finnish somewhere in the middle, I guess there is a psychological factor involved. You know what the text is about - people who do not understand a single word of Finnish do not. I looked for example at the thread regarding the TB (now, not at the time when the thread was new) and I did not even manage to realize that the Finnish parts were just some language-specific part with no importance. A single English sentence might help in such cases. I guess that many people here only read and do not write too often. Personally, I just have a look at the Scandinavian forum from time and time (I ignore FIN threads right at the beginning). If some English language text attracts my attention, I have a short look at it, if I find something Finnish, I stop. It is not that important for me in most cases. I just like to see what happens in other European countries from time to time. I do not like the general English-language subforums because they are US-dominated. I guess that the "problem" with Finnish for many is that is so different to most languages - as I said above, I am not even able to realize that a certain discussion is only about language aspects. Cezanne

Yes, it is about a Finnish TB race, but I can well imagine that cachers from nearby Scandinavian countries might be interested. I guess that was also the reason why solarflare decided to write in English. I did not get furious at all. I just observed that over the last months the number of English postings in threads where I guessed from the title that the thread is an English one has decreased. When it happens several times to me that I end up with Finnish postings in such cases, the effect is typically that I do not look at the Scandinavian forum during the next weeks. As I mentioned in an earlier discussion I do not object at all against the use of the Finnish or any other eligible language other than English in this subforum. My point was just that it also happened to me that I looked at threads which I supposed to be in English while they turned out to be in Finnish. The frequency of such events increased according to my experience. As the FIN-flag is regarded, I do not need it if the title is in Finnish. A title like Road Angel, however, strongly suggests an English thread, doesn't it? Cezanne

Are there many this kind of cases? Typically someone who doesn't understand the rest of the thread can ask what's it about. Well, I do not look very often into the Scandinavian subforum, but I also came across such cases. Just looking at two randomly chosen threads with an English title in the first line, I already came across an example http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=92737 Of course people could ask what the Finnish contributions are about, but I would do that only if I feel that the topic is very important to me which is hardly ever the case. Still I think that it is not at all a good idea to switch over to Finnish in a thread which has an English title in the first line and is started in English. I do not refer to the threads with a Finnish title in the first line, an English subtitle and the first posting being in Finnish. There providing an English translation of the meaning of the title can be seen as a courtesy to the people who do not understand Finnish. In cases as above, I feel that the situation is different and is indeed somewhat annoying to people not being able to understand Finnish. Probably there is also a psychological factor involved. It is a bit like the same when I come across Hungarian texts in the middle of English texts - like for Hungarian I do not understand a single word in Finnish texts. In many other languages I can at least guess some part of the meaning. Maybe Finnish posters could try to stick to the following proposal: Use a Finnish title in the first line if the thread is thought to be a Finnish language thread and try to use English in the threads which have an English main title. Moreover, it would be helpful to use the FIN Flag in the title of threads where the title creates the impression that the thread is going to be in English, like in this example http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=90545 Cezanne