boulter

Legal questions about sharing the data aside, one way to solve the technical problem of how to provide data to sites without making these webservices completely public would be to require a token or userID on each request. Getting your token would involve an application process, giving information about the site and its purpose. If abuse occured, you could revoke access for that token. Likewise, you could limit the request rate for that token. Google and Amazon use similar schemes for their programmatic APIs.

popeye2 sent this to the siliconvalleygeocachers yahoo group if you didn't see it: On a posting on Sept.5, I floated the idea of group hikes to search for geocaches in some of Bay Area's larger parks. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in getting such a hike approved as a geocaching event. The approver's advice was to organize the hikes on an informal basis. Well, here it is; your chance to meet other geocachers who are also interested in finding caches that are not just 'grab and go' but require some physical effort. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2004---9: 00 A.M. TO ?? SKYLINE RIDGE OPEN SPACE PRESERVE PARKING LOT On Skyline Blvd., about one mile south of Page Mill Road. N 37° 18.735 W 122° 10.616 BASS (Bay Area Sweat & Search) events are designed to help geocachers go out as a group to search for caches in some of Bay Area's larger Parks. The caches to be attempted are the ones that require a fair amont of hiking. In this first BASS hike, we will head out to the cache sites of "Grizzly Stash (GCKAXV), rated 2/3.5 and " End of the Trail 2: Lambert Creek (GCKBMF)" rated 1.5/2.5. Time permitting, we will also search for other caches in the general area. After finishing the search, we will rendezvous to a pub/coffee shop for liquid ef reshments.(optional) Searching for these caches may take four to six hours. All participants must be reasonably fit and are advised to dress appropriately and bring water and lunch. Please e-mail your reply to desai2@sbcglobal.net if you are interested in joining us. Please invite any other geocachers who may be interested in joining us. Please meet at the time and place indicated above. Popeye2

The format is pretty weird as it's what Palm Desktop does for text exports. I suppose I could also accept GPX files with Groundspeak extensions in the way that they come out of pocket queries, such as this: <?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 Pocket Query" xsi:schemaLocation="h ttp://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"> <wpt lat="37.409883" lon="-122.070467"> <name>GC6B7D</name> <Groundspeak:cache id="27517" available="True" archived="False" xmlns:Groundspeak="http://www.Groundspeak.com/cache/1/0"> <Groundspeak:logs> <Groundspeak:log id="4839845"> <Groundspeak:date>2004-08-30T07:00:00</Groundspeak:date> <Groundspeak:type>Write note</Groundspeak:type> <Groundspeak:finder id="209252">boulter</Groundspeak:finder> <Groundspeak:text encoded="False">Marky is still evil.</Groundspeak:text> </Groundspeak:log> </Groundspeak:logs> </Groundspeak:cache> </wpt> </gpx> Then again, I know of no tool that will export this format with user-entered logs. GSAK? But I'm open to other formats as well if there is a standard way to get data from apps into an exportable log format. CacheMate is the only tool that I know of that is designed to capture logs (and that's what I use), so I focused on that initially.

It grabs the waypoints, date, time, cache name and notes from cachemate. For me it's usually something brief and mostly incoherent that I entered from the field so I can remember it when I write up the full log later. Occasionally it's "Marky is evil." I then edit them in the logger and post them to the site. It's nice to edit them separately from the log page because sometimes when you try to post a find and the site times out, you lose it.

I built something like this a while ago. It saves me a ton of time in logging caches, especially when I can get my finds and notes directly out of cachemate. Check out my Geocaching Express Logger here and let me know what you think.

list me up!

ExpertGPS Calibrated Maps My archive of ExpertGPS calibrated maps is growing! Thanks to the contributions of others and my tendency to get lost, I've got 24 maps in there now. They're really useful for trying NOT to get lost and knowing which trails you need to take before you get to a park. If you have other maps to contribute, please let me know. Thanks.

I've parked up there twice with no problems, though some random guy warned us the first time. I did back up into one of those wooden poles and warped my back bumper, but that was just a good excuse to buy a heat gun.

I'm glad it worked for you, Marky.

I have sites that have been up for 10 years, so don't count on this one going away for a while. :-)

The name of the cache doesn't matter. It uses the waypoint number (GCXXXX) to figure out the cache to take action on.

If what you're trying to do is check if a waypoint is already been found for a locationless cache, I have another tool for that. And the results are in a table, so you could just copy the table into excel if you wanted. Check it out here. http://boulter.com/gps/distance/ And it make it easy for finders of locationless caches, you can provide them with this link on your cache page so they can just slap in their coordinates and check if their find has already been found: http://boulter.com/gps/distance/?from=GCXXXX (replace GCXXXX with the cache waypoint)

I really enjoyed those caches and going out in a big group is always fun. I would probably say I'd prefer them to be further apart, like 1000 feet. I felt like we'd just get going before we stopped again, so the hike felt kinda jerky. It might also be easier to get them approved that way. :-) They were all good hides which is hard to pull off when trying to pack them all so close like that. Sometimes there just isn't a good spot. But I could see how a less experienced hider might try to do this and just end up throwing film cannisters all over the place. I do appreciate that you placed them all at once. While it's a great park, it gets tedious to go back to the same place over and over again. There are plenty of new places I haven't been yet that I'd like to check out. I know no one is making me do them, but my obsessive personality says I have to find all the caches closest to my house first. :-)

Attention Garmin 60c(s) owners! If you use GPSBabel or another application that uses gpsbabel underneath (like GSAK), please support a project to bring USB support to GPSBabel. This will enable superfast transfers of waypoints and other data to your shiny new GPSr. Robert Lipe (primary developer of GPSBabel) is soliciting donations to purchase a GPS 60c to do the development on. He's halfway there, but still needs help. I've already given, but if you use these programs, give him a hand. You can read more about the project and how to give money at http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=58972 Thanks.

WeBeDnD, Nostrada, MotorBug and me are meeting at 8 on saturday (gotta get out before it gets hot!) to clean those up. I'll bet we'll run into others...

I was curious about this back in March and did the research: -- I thought Born Free was the oldest cache in the area, but I just went through the first 150 or so caches and found two others that were older: Firestone http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC78 Doggie Do http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCD2 Born Free http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCD5 These were all placed in late 2000 and are amazingly all still active. -- This is a nice segway for my new "Old Timer" TB whose goal is to find older caches. It's currently in Doggie Do. http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=39365

WOW! Workerofwood (AKA WoW) hit 1000 today. That's in exactly SIX months folks. 1001 caches / 183 days = 5.46 caches/day! Wow! That's a lot of caches "on the way to work". Placing 35 caches (most with amazing camo) ain't bad either! Congrats, workerofwood!

Great! What is that piece then? Does it come with 60cs or do I just need to buy the cheapest mount I can find and throw away the mount part?

I have an etrex vista and I'm about to upgrade to a 60cs. I'm wondering if I'm going to have to rebuy my car mount and bike mount to accomidate the 60cs or is there a battery cover I can get that will allow it to use the same mounts as the etrex? These are the mounts I currently have: http://shop.garmin.com/accessory.jsp?sku=010%2D10267%2D00 http://shop.garmin.com/accessory.jsp?sku=010%2D10274%2D00 Thanks.

Very nice! I especially like the option to set the date automatically when marking a cache as found. Any reason why you close to only set the time when you hit done rather when you just hit found? I tried hitting found then leaving it for a while and when I hit done, it didn't record the time. This is what I think would be ideal for me: A big button that says "Found" that sets the time. I originally requested the Mark Time button, but if the Found checkbox sets it, I no longer need it there versus the menu. Usually I type in some quick notes, then leave it open as I often think of other things later. When I'm ready for my next cache, I hit done and search for the next one. As I see it now, if I do things this way, the time won't be set until I hit done (potentially a while after I actually find the cache) and possibly not at all if palm turns off.

The projections use the overall average of caches/day since you registered with geocaching. So if you increase or pick up your pace, it won't reflect that very well. I'm thinking about doing 30-day averages or some other line fitting instead to make them more accurate.

I just came over to this forum to post the same thing. :-) For some reason these notifications of new posts don't work very reliably. I'm pretty sure bykenut has got #15 sealed up with less than 50 to go. At my current pace, I'll be up there at 1K sometime in June. Frightening.

I'm working on something to produce a GPX file from a CacheMate PDB file. It might be possible to export what's on the Log page as well, but it'll have to be another namespace in the GPX file... don't want to step on anything that Jeremy, etc. might add to their file format. I've merged all my pocket queries into one and run cmconvert so I can avoid any merging that cachemate has to do. I've waited literally hours to do merges of one pdb into the cachemate database. But I guess since I'm starting fresh, I could uncheck the Merge import file records option and it should be a lot faster right? Only downside would be that I'd have to download multiple pdb files since I don't run cmconvert on the same machine that I hotsync from. But I can live with that. Without the logs in "cmunconvert", it wouldn't be very useful to me. You could always add your own XML namespace and you'd be sure that you won't ever collide with Jeremy. Anyway, if you want to see what I'm after, you can check out my "Geocaching Express Logger for Cachmate" at http://boulter.com/geocaching/logger/ Oh, and you've got my vote. :-) Jeff

Two ideas for the next version of cachemate: I'd like an option that would automatically set the end time on the log sheet when I check the "found" box. That would save me two clumbsy thumb presses per cache. Another thing I'd like to do is to be able to specify the category with cmconvert. What I do now is merge several pocket queries with GPSbabel into one gpx, then run it through cmconvert. This makes it really quick to upload new data because I can get several pocket queries with one upload. The only problem is that I lose the ability to import those pdb files with different categories, so all my locationless caches and "away" caches are mixed in with my "closest to home" caches. Not a big deal really, but would be nice. I've also been working on some tools to take cachemate generated memo logs, parse them, and put them into a web page interface that's easy to post to gc.com. Right now it's kinda cumbersome as you need to export from cachemate to memo pad, sync, export the logs from Palm Desktop, then upload the file to my tool. Any plans to make getting data out of cachemate easier? I guess something like "cmunconvert" would do it?

Speaking of 4-digit cachers, is there life after 1000 caches? Looks like I'll be there in June or so, but after that I'm not sure what I'm going for. Sure, it's all about the experience, but what are some motivating cumulative goals? I noticed that georgeandmary got to 1000 then slowed down quite a bit.