Big Matt and Shell

Ask and you shall receive! Now the biggest gripe I have seen is the need to complete an Adventure Lab for the August challenge

I've heard a few people saying this Geoff as they don't want to wipe out an Earthcache or Virtual cache that may be needed for next month so the challenge is actually having the opposite effect.

How is everyone going with the current wheel of challenges streak? I found myself thinking as I tried to find the nearest cache to home in the dark last night that I wonder if there would have been a better time of the year and better separation of challenges especially for those of us in the southern hemisphere who are out in the cold and dark before or after work trying to keep a streak of 28 days going after found caches over 20 different days last month. I really do normally enjoy these challenges and like that they are driven to get us out and enjoying caching but I wonder if it might be having an opposite effect. I know if I was planning to start a steak, I wouldn't normally start this in July in Australia. Just try and remember, caching is about having fun, if you find that you're no longer having that fun it might be time to give a day a miss rather than turning the fun into a chore.

Welcome back! Do we ever really leave or is it just a long slump?

Thanks very much

Hi All, My message centre is now showing all messages with the HTML tags rather than putting in the breaks. Any idea how to fix? It makes reading long messages on a PC rather challenging. Here is an example,

Thats a simple one, Albany Quarantine - GC576. Not a bad cache from memory. You can look this up easily yourself from the main screen, type in Western Australia in the search box and then sort by placed date. This will give you the following result.

It's been a lot of years since I left some form of swaps in a cache. These days it's very much TNLNSL.

Thanks for the heads up.

Hi Guys, I'm having some challenges with the solution checker and listed coordinate types and getting it to appear on the cache page for two of my caches, https://coord.info/GC35EB0 and https://coord.info/GC1DRNR I am able to tick the box to say display the checker but when I click save or save and close the checker doesn't display on the page (to me at least) and if I go back to the edit page the checkbox will no longer be checked. For debugging it is worth noting that these pages didn't have the listed coordinates selected as physical or virtual but one of them appears to have saved that data but the other has not even though I get the message that the page has saved. If I go back to the edit page after viewing the cache page again I get the following with no errors shown Any help you can offer would be appreciated. Chrome Version 63

Same issue here, I hope GS can give us an update when they return on Monday

All of these people who are assuming that being a PM gives them a right to Google Maps have me scratching my head to be honest. A look at the membership comparison chart clearly shows the only map related item is, I have only ever paid for my PM for two main reasons. The first is to allow me to seach for PM caches. The second is to receive PQ’s. If you want different mapping there are lots of other options. You can even just pull the GPX file into Google Earth if you like. If you want satellite photos before searching for a cache copy and paste the coordinates into Google Maps. I for one would NOT be paying for any increase to gain the Google Maps functionality.

As someone who has just built my first cartridge and gone through the frustration of trying to run the GS software on a laptop only to find it wouldn't run with the current Windows OS. To then try the the software being plugged here as the other option to get a response a few days later to say I asked for access via the wrong method (I used PM) It's a wonder I didn't give up there, any sane person would of! I eventually found the third option and battled my way through to create a very basic cartridge. I have since spent a number of hours reading through posts on the forum and was about to start my own post when I found this one, I'd say if it isn't dead then it cant be far off. Jeremy posted the above comments 18 months ago tomorrow (or the day after for those of you on the other side) and there hasn't been a single other post by anyone from GS in this thread since then. So I ask this, what is GS's current position re Wherigo 18 months down the track. I think that the fact that their flagship software is still Alpha software and wont run on the current version of the worlds most popular OS speaks volumes. It's little wonder it hasn't taken off. Guys, you do some things really well and others not so well, unfortunately this falls into the far right of the second one in my mind.

That sounds like an idea to me! I'll give that a try and see how I go. I actually have a coordinate so I can use it to work on a small zone. Thanks for your help. I hadn't considered the PPC side of things I had just been thinking Oregon and Colorado. I have a simple solution above, I'll give it a go. Thanks for your help.

Hi Guys, I created my first cartridge, just a basic 3 zone cartridge based on taking our dogs for a walk. I have had a bit of feedback from the first people to complete the Wherigo that the final coordinates popped up on screen but they entered through them. I was wondering if you can force the cartridge to create a waypoint upon sucessful completion. I have read through all the posts on the forum but can't see anything on this. Does anyone have any ideas or have an open cartridge they can suggest? Cheers, Matt

You didn't expect a response in under 24 hours did you? The silence is deafening, as is usual with any issue like this. This is so very frustrating, why can't they just go back to emailing our PQ's. I only just went through and changed my PQ's to 1000 cache PQ's now I've got nothing!

We have just returned from a few days caching and I uploaded my field notes from our Oregon 300 into Firefox and started logging. About 20 logs in I noticed that they had the wrong date on them. I have gone back and checked all my other logs this week and they are fine but today's just don't want to work. I have looked at the field notes page and the logs show the correct local time. Has something changed on the page that is affecting this?

It's great to see such a response from all of you guys. It is refreshing to see that a business can admit it's mistakes and learn from them. And it's good to see that our comments don't fall on deaf ears. All we ask is to be kept in the loop. 1000 caches per pocket query - FANTASTIC NEWS. Great idea! I add a second to the suggestion. Wouldn't this be nice!

Totally agree, also how about getting us some level of service? Or even a response from TPTB to let us know what is happening? That last time we heard from GS was here it seems each time something goes wrong there is a 4 hour service window. What is GS's service offer? Do you have a 24 hour dev team? If any problem happens on a weekend it seems to take ages to get anything. I know of websites that seem to be able to have a quicker turnaround and their membership is free! It would be nice to see GS putting some of our Premium Membership fee to a bit more use?

Totally agree with the idea of GC making a per state gpx file available. Also coming from Australia, it certainly would suit most people here I think. We all download the same PQs every week for our own state. A fantastic idea, this would save the significant management of PQ dates to ensure that I can get the entire state into 7 or 8 queries to allow me to cache on demand as I travel around but using GSAK. I had considered purchasing a second premium account so obviously I would be interesting in paying more for the service. I look forward to seeing what comes from this...

Not working here in Australia with Firefox or IE. I suppose we'll have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up and finish their holidays.

I think I have missed a few because I'm so tall! Sometimes Shell comes up with ones that I haven't gotten quite far enough down! In response to your question, I have been wanting to set up an infrared motion activated camera around a really tricky cache hide and then send the feed to each cacher after they have found the cache pointing out how close they came so many times. Perhaps I'm just cruel...

Ditto, I love it because it gives me soemthing to work towards.

As a cache owner, if you're not seeing more descriptive logs, try hiding a better cache next time. Totally agree, whilst my essay skills aren't great I always try to write a descriptive log. With all the effort that goes into creating a cache, it drives me nuts when the log you get in return is TFTC, TNLNSL. It may take a while longer but it is my way of paying respect and saying thanks to the person who put the cache out. I will not come out and publicly shoot a cache owner down in flames but if I find a cache that has not had the effort put in, then my log will be very basic. I have found caches with no swaps an A4 page for a log and nothing else. Normally these belong to very junior cachers or serial cachers who own hundreds of caches (not all are this bad). I just wish some people would put a bit more thought into their logs and their caches! And remember it doesn't take much to make sure the basic spelling and grammatical rules are followed when creating a cache, get a free online spell checker, and read the GC University.

I'm only reasonably new to the forums but it is dissapointing to see how hostile some cachers get... I have posted a few points but often don't as I refuse to get dragged into the arguments. Apart from that they are great.