rragan

So changing the time might do the trick. I'll try that. Thanks

I have a tool that, given a list of GC codes and some date info plus message, generates a drafts file. I uploaded that file to verify I hadn't missed any finds in the list -- easy to spot once the full cache name is shown after upload. I spotted a couple of missed finds and so hit Delete uploaded drafts and at the last moment saw a message that I couldn't upload them again. Arggh. Sure enough I can't upload the file again and get on with logging because somewhere a list of uploaded drafts prevents me from uploading them again. I guess this might be to prevent double logging but there is now a more recent change which prevents double logging via any route. Is there a way to clear the memory of previous uploaded drafts or do I now have to enter these all manually one at a time?

The developer console in Chrome reported this warning when I loaded a cache page. GC7D48G_trump-my-knowledge-puerto-rico:1 The certificate used to load https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC7D48G_trump-my-knowledge-puerto-rico uses an SSL certificate that will be distrusted in an upcoming release of Chrome. Once distrusted, users will be prevented from loading this resource. See https://g.co/chrome/symantecpkicerts for more information. Hopefully this can be remedied

What would be the logging requirements? I think these "General Education caches" would encourage learning something at the designated location like with Earthcaches and demonstrating that learning plus some proof of being at the location. This is pretty similar to Earthcaches today. History caches could fall under this umbrella. Endangered species education could be another area. Botany is another area to learn things.

Is there another link? The one you provided goes to your personal blog. I don't see anything about Pokemon or National Parks there. Sorry. Copy/paste fail. Here is the link. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-national-parks-level-up/

I disagree that a, "limited relaxation of the ban on virtuals would not resurrect the problems that led to their retirement." One of the major problems with virtual caches is that many land managers prefer them. If the virtual option is available, the physical option fails. Currently, physical caches are being allowed by National Parks. The fastest way to shut down this easing of past restrictions on physical caches in US National park would be to bring back a virtual option. The NPS is even supporting its ownGeoTour. Additionally there's been a shift towards physical caches in some National Wildlife Refuges, dependent on their initial purposes and funding. There are physical caches in 4 NWR in Florida, and two National Parks. I know they have relaxed some on physical caches but there are places where such are just not going to work but have significant interest. Variety is what interests people as much as finding a container so I think there is a place for physical, earth caches, Wherigos and some new virtuals.

It looks like National Parks may have changed their views on geolocation games in the parks. "“One of our goals as part of the National Park Service Centennial is to connect with and create the next generation of park visitors, supporters, and advocates,” Rains writes in an email. “Games that use geolocation are a new and emerging opportunity to bring new audiences to the park.” This article goes into more detail specifically for Pokemon Go. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-national-parks-level-up/ Currently grandfathered virtuals and Earth Caches are pretty much what our game has to offer. Much as the NPS is trying to generate more interest in going to parks and foster love of the outdoors in a new generation, it seems we ought to be doing something similar. While Earthcaches are educational, not every park has geologic features worthy of one. Nor do many players have an interest in them. I know new virtuals are no more but as a cache type they are perfect for parks as they can educate and can be setup to safeguard the park property and vegetation -- unlike physical caches. Geocaching.com together with the Park Service could innovate together by finding appropriate places for new virtuals but only in National Parks and monuments including National Historic Parks. This limited relaxation of the ban on virtuals would not resurrect the problems that led to their retirement. Badges or awards could exist for players who find a certain number of them. No new icon type would be needed.

Where are you seeing that it doesn't have a .gpx extension? I just tried it on two iPhones and saved the file into various file storage apps (e.g. OneDrive, Documents, etc.) or even attaching to a new email, and every time the file I got was named in the form "GCCODE.gpx". You are correct. The download filename is GCCODE.gpx. I assumed the extension was missing because with Chrome, it shows the file as GCCODE_titletext and an option to Download. Clicking Download leads to an option to Open In... after the download. Saving the file to Dropbox and looking at the contents, I see the HTML file of the cache page. Weird. I hooked up the iPad through the Burp proxy to capture the Request/Response for Safari that works and the one for Chrome that does not. The requests are pretty much identical except for some small differences in User Agent and Cookies. The responses are identical in Content-Size and headers except for cookies and a timestamp in the GPX data. 8:57:25 PM https://www.geocaching.com:443'>https://www.geocaching.com:443 [63.251.163.200] ============================POST Request========================== POST /geocache/GC75EK8_big-yellow-taxi-iii HTTP/1.1 Host: www.geocaching.com Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Origin: https://www.geocaching.com Content-Length: 9404 Connection: close User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 9_3_5 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0 Mobile/13G36 Safari/601.1 Referer: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC75EK8_big-yellow-taxi-iii Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=k5u5wdtucxiqzk0z1uxfb3zv; Culture=en-US; _hjIncludedInSample=1; ai_authUser=rragan; ai_session=uFW2i|1495165162762|1495166237449.6; ai_user=jBR+J|2017-04-06T13:30:36.690Z; __gads=ID=b7e0d7e8d641016d:T=1491485456:S=ALNI_MYpiiQSiE9PuS0Igw1166FsVS1lUg; __qca=P0-908728445-1491485437091; _ga=GA1.2.58191656.1491484384; _gid=GA1.2.682400320.1495165899; gspkauth=hJ6TguPhvGiuOd3zKqB4vydK__Y_yg_d7ofdWy8-1gc3quBaVzMcU8vDVBrbbtzUNfTkeGwDE6fPiFfnMDgn81uDDPQpzhaqwP5MpHYwXp_IdtVOTndma_9-GwKpNBcAQL3NrpWFwY3pXZUq6lcPkbgID1SWnCSC9WOi1tc_Gg81 ============POST Response=================== HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: no-cache Pragma: no-cache Content-Type: application/gpx Expires: -1 Server: Microsoft-IIS/8.5 content-disposition: attachment; filename=GC75EK8.gpx X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 Set-Cookie: gspkauth=6qQiGrBcY8oa9xOoaPVy5IOhdutSJJHOe26_DR_Y3ie1qokAFbPRPhQFr23xKups_VDXlQKLjcqtc36QeizcivKIJb-4EH5a9cFEhZj7EGsioYhHpRhICzeVAe8qaAVGUUIPTUOk9HREAVXZVmSKggStpHmWKOw36PRNNIYalxU1; domain=.geocaching.com; expires=Mon, 19-Jun-2017 03:59:51 GMT; path=/; secure; HttpOnly Set-Cookie: Culture=en-US; path=/ Request-Context: appId=cid-v1:019d82c2-5dd7-44cb-aa94-01e052f0d40c X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 03:59:51 GMT Connection: close Content-Length: 7903 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <gpx xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="1.0" creator="Groundspeak, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.Groundspeak.com" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0/gpx.xsd http://www.Groundspeak.com/cache/1/0 http://www.Groundspeak.com/cache/1/0/cache.xsd" xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0"> <name>Cache Listing Generated from Geocaching.com</name> ......rest of GPX omitted At the point the Response returns, Safari is off and running to let me pick an app to handle it. Chrome, on the other hand, goes on to issue this HEAD request ====================================================== HEAD /geocache/GC75EK8_big-yellow-taxi-iii HTTP/1.1 Host: www.geocaching.com Connection: close User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 9_3_5 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/58.0.3029.113 Mobile/13G36 Safari/601.1.46 Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=vuyyl1wjvzlj4oza0k5mbi55 ====================================================== HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: no-cache Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 40226 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Expires: -1 Server: Microsoft-IIS/8.5 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 Request-Context: appId=cid-v1:019d82c2-5dd7-44cb-aa94-01e052f0d40c X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 03:59:55 GMT Connection: close ====================================================== The traffic examination didn't tell me much except that Chrome seems to be acting weirdly in a standard file download case. Maybe I'm missing something as Chrome not doing downloads properly is hard to believe. So, nothing is wrong with geocaching.com as far as I can see. I also tried iOS 9 and 10 with the same behavior.

Is this on Android where you can control file associations? The email links go to http://coord.info. On IOS, Geocaching.com controls the association and the only places to handle it are a web page or the geocaching app.

Note: this applies to iOS but is germane to Android. Open a cache page in Safari from a link in a notification email or any other link to the cache page. . From the cache page, I can easily store that cache into a 3rd party app using the GPX button. Safari will prompt for the app to handle the download. Any app that can handle the GPX type can be sent the file. For example, this works with Cachly and Geosphere but also with other non-geocaching apps like Pocket Earth. The download file name is of the form GCCODE_title Currently, only Safari can handle the GPX file because it looks at the MIME type headers. Chrome depends on the file extension so the download cannot be directed to apps registered to support GPX files. Adding the .gpx extension would fix this and, as far as I know, allow Android file associations to offer the same capability on that platform. The Geocaching app is able to grab coord.info links and show them in the app so handling GPX is not strictly necessary.

The download file does not have a .gpx extension. Try searching for a file with the GC code.

Note: I see I was mistaken. I depend on the GPX file button, not the Send To GPS. I doubt the GPX file button is threatened.

Could you not add it to a list? I could I guess but then I'd need to possibly create the list first and pull the list to the app. Later I'd have to clean up the list.

New Cache notifications come by email. I could type in the GC code in the app at some risk of error, especially on a mobile device keyboard. It is easier just to tap the link in the email to open the web page and then tap Send To GPS to save the new cache into the app. No typing, no chance for error.

With the near demise of browser plugins, I hear comments that the Send To GPS button on a Cache page is useless. Please do not remove this feature. It is very handy for apps like Cachly and Geosphere that can handle the iOS Send To function. Open a cache page in Safari from a link in a notification email. Then I can easily store that cache into a 3rd party app using the Send To GPS button. The only improvements I can think of is adding a .gpx extension to the file name. Currently, only Safari can handle the Send To GPS because it looks at the MIME type headers. Chrome depends on the file extension so the send does not work from it. Making the Geocaching app able to receive a Send To and store the cache in a list would also be great.

Please don't remove email functionality. Not everyone is hooked into Message Center. I contacted an EarthCache reviewer yesterday and Send Email was the only choice. I won't repeat previous comments on why email is a good choice for many.

Not at all fond of it. One of the little things that matter in Geosphere was the ability to customize pin colors for all the types. Of course, Earth Caches should be brown.

Here is the 500 mile distance challenge. https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6QR2E_500-mile-challenge It is not as hard as two others around here: 1) find two caches 2000 miles apart on the same day. 2) similar but 5000 miles apart. There are a couple of distance to moon challenges out there. Search.

I did a search for Mystery type with challenge in the title and sorted by Date Placed. I found a surprising number of challenges are being done. Some are nice new spins on basic ideas. I liked the Electoral College Challenge. You have to find enough states to accumulate 270 electoral votes. I was looking for a cache-to-cache distance challenge and found at least one. This would seem to suggest my Antipodes challenge would be ok. I qualify the existing checker for the one in Florida and I found 10 folks locally that qualify.

I really don't understand applying the 10 local people qualify rule to a Jasmer. No one is going to complete it without substantial travel. They generally take several years to earn it. As one of the top 4 challenges in our sport, it should not be trivial to attain. Having one placed near a community raises awareness and interest. Still we seem to mostly have one per state and this almost seems to have become a tradition. Double Jasmer, it could be argued is gilding the lily. There are only 11 published globally so maybe the world could do with a few more.

I would guess the minimum area would be that covered by the reviewer responsible. In cases of high activity like the Bay Area and LA where there are multiple reviewers, you might make a case for a larger area. Reviewers learn from each other and I think the 10 qualifiers idea seems to be spreading.

I'm not an approved Lua developer although I wrote a checker that was discussed in this thread and then had the idea rejected by GS. If I can help, let me know. Lua is not that hard a language. The tricky bit is testing the code. Previously I wrapped the code in my own test harness faking the PGC API calls. Still, once bitten twice shy so the idea ought to be deemed acceptable before coding.

"Global Magic 10% Club Challenge"

Nice work. I looked at some of the existing checkers and the DeLorme ones draw a map with data superimposed. The 360 degree challenges also draw a map but doesn't look like a good fit. Assuming this challenge is allowed, it will need a catchy name. Fizzy challenge seems to be taken.

I was trying to grok what 10% might look like -- not helped by a Mercator projection. North America has 5.8% of surface area. So visualize multiple North Americas in your polygon and if you can fit two instances, you probably qualify.