rickrich

Ringbone rocks! Real cash in the cache! Tre-sure Now, I like a good walk in the woods as much as anybody. But when there is cash in the cache, the thrill is even better, even if you aren't FTF! I hope this is the start of a trend. I can't wait until somebody gets Bill Gates to hide a few caches!

Here is my letter:

When I first started caching, I would do a cache a day at lunchtime. This was a pleasant way to "take a hike" with some kind of "purpose". The "purpose" seemed to be a necessary ingredient in order to actually get me outside. Yeah, its a personality disorder. But I'm not going to spend the $$$ in analysis to correct it. These days, I've cleared out all nearby caches, and the lunchtime walk to find a cache is history. I miss it. I'm dreaming of a solution to this problem. I call it "cache-o-matic". Using the outlines of parks in the area (which can be gotten, roughly, from the Tiger data), the cacho-o-matic will generate a random lat/lon waypoint in a random park within a few minutes drive. That becomes my hike for lunch. When I arrive at the waypoint, maybe I'll even place a physical cache nearby for others to find. Anyway, thats my idea. Before I start working on the program to do this, I was wondering if anybody else has either already got a program to do this, or has solved the problem another way? -Rick

I don't see any way in Pocket Queries to eliminate Members Only caches (MOCs) from the results. There are at least a couple of reasons why you would want to do that: 1) MOCs aren't PC; and 2) Group caching where not all of the participants are members. [There is no need for people to mention that these can be filtered on the client side] -Rick

First, congratulations to Centris on 1000 bug FINDS! Second, It seems to me that gc.com needs to have TWO statistics for Travel Bugs. 1) The traditional FOUND count, as it was up until a few days ago. 2) A new MOVED count. For whatever reason, it has been common practice to log TB finds with just a note if the cacher doesn't move them. It is wrong not to continue to count these as finds. But I can see why people would like to know how many times they have moved TB's. Plus, it gives them another statistic that they can compete on or set a personal goal for. And that has got to be good business for gc.com. Jeremy.com^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgc.com should make these changes quickly, to avoid PO'ing a lot of paying members. -Rick FULL DISCLOSURE: I gave up logging TB's long ago, as well as exchanging McToys, as both activities bore me. So I have no vested interest in the way this turns out. But I do understand these activities are thrilling for other people.

I'm not reall thrilled with the lack of sorting options on the website for the various dates associated with a cache (date placed, date approved, date last found, date last logged, etc). So I'm less than happy having to choose date approved vs. date placed. I guess if given only one option to choose for sorting the "newest" caches, I'd choose "sort by the most recent of cache placed OR cache approved". But as a professional programmer, I'd rather not be in the middle of these debates and would rather just give people the option to sort by whatever criteria suits them. -Rick

Yep. They are working now. Thanks.

There is another bug with remembering the "Time Last Placed" field. 1) Click "Create a new query" 2) Check off "Postal Code" and enter a postal code (because "by coordinates" is broken) 3) Check "Placed During the last month" 4) Click submit information 5) Note that the return web page says that everything went AOK, and the coords are listed there. 6) Click "return to list". 7) Click on the PQ you just created 8) Note that "Placed during" now says "the last week" instead of the last month This is broken as of 6PM CST 1/28/04 -Rick

You still can't select the number of cache logs you want included. As an esteemed caching friend noted... No to mention that cache owners often want all logs to keep as a permanent record of their caches. -Rick

1) Select "Create a new query". 2) Check off "By coordinates". 3) Enter 45 and 093 for lat/lon. Leave mins at 00.000 4) Click Submit information. 5) Note that the return web page says that everything went AOK, and the coords are listed there. 6) Click "return to list". 7) Click on the new PQ. 8) Note that "By coordinates" is no longer checked, and the lat/lon is zeroed. This is broken as of 9AM CST 1/28/04. -Rick

Rock Johnson over at the MNGCA was wondering how many degrees of separation there were between him and other MNGCA cachers. So he started a thread there for people to list who they have run into on the trails, and who they have cached with. Events are excluded. Well, with the weather being sub-zero (F) here today, I took that ball and ran a ways with it, coming up with this partial and very incomplete graph of links between MN cachers. Black edges are chance encounters on the trail, red edges are cachers that have cached together. I'm adding the red links sparingly, only when needed to keep the graph as connected as possible. http://linuxtrade.0catch.com/mngca/6deg.html I wonder, have there been any other attempts to create such graphs of geocachers? -Rick

Here is my GIANT scrollable/clickable map of Twin Cities caches I have found. Don't bother unless you have a broadband connection and a lot of memory on your computer. It takes about 60 seconds to load. The actual cache locations are slightly off due to the Tiger Map Server doing strange things at very high resolution. This is a proof of concept and was made with my geo-map command line tool. The caches I have found are in monochrome, the ones I haven't found are in color. http://linuxtrade.0catch.com/mngca/big.html -Rick

Here is my GIANT scrollable/clickable map of Twin Cities caches. Don't bother unless you have a broadband connection and a lot of memory on your computer. It takes about 60 seconds to load. The actual cache locations are slightly off due to the Tiger Map Server doing strange things at very high resolution. This is a proof of concept and was made with my geo-map command line tool. http://linuxtrade.0catch.com/mngca/big.html -Rick Conspiracy Theory of the Day: the source code for the USGS Tiger Map Server hasn't "been lost" like they claim. Its been deep-sixed by commercial mapping lobby interests.

So far, that sounds like the most valuable trinket left so far. Probably some very young child made that for trading. I get choked up just thinking about it.

The torture is part of the puniishment.

Perhaps this New Years's Resolution was to live in peace and harmony for the next year? Any chance we will see a sharable database come out if this as well? -Rick

I made Eagle on my 14th birthday (1971), and was in OA. As soon as I got Eagle I became an Explorer and had way more fun because it was co-ed. I went to Philmont as an Explorer in 1972. The Explorer Post's focus was "Math, Science, and Engineering", and we did a little bit of that. But mostly we went camping and canoeing, once a month, rain or shine. Our Exporer Post was at one time the largest distributor/applicator of Milky Spore (for control of Japanese Beetle grubs) on the east coast, and we were literally swimming in money. It really beat the crap out of selling XMAS wreaths :-) We all got a 10 day trip to Daytona and Walt Disney World fully paid for by the Post. Plus, every kid was getting paid $3.25//hour for laying down the stuff, which was pretty good dosh back in 1972. I was an Exporer until I graduated from high school, and never really held a "real" job as a teenager. Every vice I have I learned in Scouts and Explorers. [stories deleted by moderator]. Its no wonder I have extremely fond memories scouting. -Rick

Email from gc.com to yahoo.com comes with a 5 hour delay today, and appears to still be slow. Tests Ive run indicate the slowness is on the gc.com end. Received: from 63.251.163.165 (EHLO signal.Groundspeak.com) (63.251.163.165) by mta133.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sat, 03 Jan 2004 13:43:00 -0800 Received: from bender.Groundspeak.com (bender.Groundspeak.com [63.251.163.173]) by signal.Groundspeak.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEFF8133684 for <dsadsdsa@yahoo.com>; Sat, 3 Jan 2004 07:59:06 -0800 (PST) -Rick

If you have a Linux box handy, or install CygWin on an XP box, you can use my geo-map tool to do what you want, e.g. $ geo-map -s30k 45.00.000 -93.30.000 "" hline,red,2 http://geo.rkkda.com

Anybody who makes the spring break run from the Boston area to Florida could hit 13-14 states in 24 hours. And get a nice reward at the end. -Rick

Travel bugs aren't interesting to many cachers, myself included. However, I love virtuals. There is no accounting for taste. -Rick

There may be 180,000 registered users, but only 13,000 of them logged caches in the last (very busy) week. That gives you a good idea of the ratio of people who have tried geocaching to the number of people who got hooked and do it regularly (and might be willing to pay). Right now, thats an average of only 260 active geocachers per state. Could Disney (or anybody) increase this number by an order of magnitude while simultaneously increasing the monthly fee? I doubt it. Could Jeremy convince them that this is possible, then sell out at a premium price? Possibly. There are indications that 2004 is shaping up to be another 1999 as far as Internet bubbles go. -Rick

I am more interested in what other people DIDN'T find. I wish there was a way to query on caches logged DNF by a particular user, or any cache logs by a particular user. The DNF entries are often longer and more amusing to read.

I left a Handspring Visor Deluxe PDA and a Magallen GPS Companion after finding this multistage urban cache... http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&ID=94324&log=y I didn't realize I had left it until the next morning. By the time I got back there, it was gone. I like to think that there is a new geocacher out there now, placing caches for me to find, in order to replay me for my charity. I ended up replacing the pair with identical but used units for a total of $75. Bringing expensive gear geocaching is a risk I will never take again. YMMV. -Rick