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Morton

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Everything posted by Morton

  1. One of the options to buy is through the Groundspeak store - http://store.Groundspeak.com/ProductInfo.a...uctid=GSPANNUAL It says: "By adding more than 1 to the cart you can receive additional years." Never tried it myself though!
  2. I think that's how the racehorse was pronounced. There is a much-told story in my family about how my grandfather almost, but didn't quite, bet £1 on it, which at 100/1 would have yielded a small fortune in those days. The mountain in Scotland is pronounced "FON-yaaven" by my hill-yomping friends, although a quick Google for confirmation turns up various alternatives. While I'm by no means an expert on these things, it looks like it's already a corruption of the original Gaelic name... so I guess all bets are off.
  3. I went a year or so ago, and have to say there weren't that many good caches at the time. I wasn't all that inspired by the virtuals... 2C (5) - POINT was near my hotel and was an interesting place to drop into, but even that one probably wasn't worth much of a trip. Amsterdam Urban 2 has the amusing feature that you need to be on a boat to find it. You can hire pedalos from various places around the city. They're more fun than you think they're going to be! I did very much enjoy Komen en gaan - it's a novel concept I haven't seen before, though you'll have to print out all the photos attached to the cache page before you leave home. You should expect the whole thing to take a couple of hours, but it's central enough that you don't have to do it in one go - I dropped in over several evenings. The final location was, in my humble opinion, well dodgy - but that was largely because of a particular thing I can't do which you probably can... you can decrypt my log for more details (at the cost of a very mild spoiler). Enjoy your trip!
  4. No, they can't - at least not in the UK. A business, dealing with a consumer, can't limit their liability for death or personal injury arising from their negligence, and any attempt to do so is void. This is one of the provisions of the Unfair Contract Terms Act and dates from the 1930's, I think. The main legal purpose of the "disclaimers" you're made to sign before you're allowed to go horse-riding (or whatever) is to prove that you've been warned that the activity has an element of risk, but have decided to do it anyway. This prevents you arguing - or at least makes it harder to argue - that the company was negligent because they didn't warn you that you might fall off the horse.
  5. If it is indeed throttling (and as we've discussed separately, that seems likely), then it wasn't *really* a lie, because it's not *really* a problem with the server. It's more a technique they use to manage their service. The idea is that if a particular sender bombards you with a huge amount of email, you start to "push back" and slow down the rate you accept it. This protects your system from getting overloaded and means that everybody else's mail still gets through. (Think of the Royal Mail at Christmas - important letters get delayed because they're caught up among all those Christmas cards, and the whole system becomes pretty hit and miss for the whole of December. This is the kind of situation throttling is supposed to avoid.) The problem here is that the personalized and time-sensitive gc.com mails have been caught up by rules designed for bulk mailings. If the same thing were happening to the "here are things you might want to buy" mails from Amazon, for example, nobody would be in any way unhappy. It does still seem a bit weird that a huge ISP like AOL would throttle a comparatively small website like gc.com... but, there you are.
  6. In GSAK. One of its features is to connect to your email service provider, check for any PQ results in your inbox and automatically load them into GSAK. Optionally, it can then delete the email to get it out of your inbox. Which is very neat. Unfortunately however, I don't think that feature's quite caught up with the new sub-waypoint things gc.com has introduced (parking, trailhead, etc.) When importing a PQ manually the latest build of GSAK has the option to just ignore these, but that feature didn't seem to have made it onto the email dialog last time I looked. I'm sure it's on its way. Another thing you can do (which I found out quite late, so possibly others don't know about either) is to drag a zip file directly into GSAK - i.e., just drop it on top of GSAK's window. This works really well if you use a desktop client like Outlook Express, because you can just drag it from the email right into GSAK. It will obviously work less well with web-based mail, because then you'll have to manually download the zip file first.
  7. I can probably work out where the delay is... or at least I ought to be able to. Up until about a month ago I ran customer support for an email server product (or, most of the time, ) I'll need to see the "headers" aka "Internet headers" or "full headers" for a delayed message though. You'll probably be able to find these if you dig about in the Properties or Options for a delayed message. In Outlook Express, for example, it's on the Details tab of the Properties dialog. You're looking for a load of gubbins like this: Received: from smtp-in4.blueyonder.co.uk ([172.23.146.15]) by cluster5 with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:05:33 +0000 Received: from eback04.blueyonder.co.uk ([195.188.53.215]) by smtp-in4.blueyonder.co.uk with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:05:33 +0000 Note that the full set of these will contain a load of vaguely personal data (your email address certainly), so it's probably better to mail it to me rather than post here. In fact this whole conversation probably belongs in email, but given that the point is that you're not getting your email, I hope the forum will indulge us.
  8. It's when somebody already "known" in the forum creates another account with a different name, and pretends to be two people.
  9. Why thank you... very kind of you to say so. Many things about that cache were immensely entertaining, but I particularly enjoyed the comments which arrived in my inbox every time I published an installment! I think in the end I *would* have given up, if I hadn't known there were so many people watching!
  10. It just highlights your opinion that the cache in question Should Be Archived. For example, suppose someone's left the game (no longer logs onto geocaching.com) and one of their caches has been trashed or is otherwise in a parlous state. An SBA log is a convenient way to report this situation to the powers that be. Yes. Without any comment on the current situation: it's almost certainly appropriate to attempt to contact the owner before making an SBA log. But it's perfectly understandable that some people (perhaps less aware of the nuances) may omit to do that. SBA logs are a useful mechanism to highlight caches which you think Should Be Archived, if you can't get any response from the owner. (Or, I guess, if there's a genuine dispute over the legitimacy of a cache. No idea how common that is.)
  11. Er... yes. Sorry, "I wouldn't go caching there" was supposed to mean "in areas you're warned against", not "the whole of Croatia". But I see now that not at all what I actually wrote I'd also assumed the "don't step off the tarmac" thing was ultra-conservative guidance for tourists, and that people who actually live and work there operate to more sophisticated rules... but perhaps not.
  12. That wouldn't have occurred to me - it's hardly unusual to say there's a surprise item in a cache. And given that it's on an 1830m peak it doesn't surprise me that it hasn't been visited yet either. However, when I was in Croatia a couple of years ago there were large areas where you were advised not to step off a hard surface, because there are still land mines. So to answer your question, no, I wouldn't go caching there. Locals presumably know what's safe and what isn't - I don't.
  13. I just knew it was madness to "unignore" your post. One day you'll have something positive to say instead of constantly rubbishing what everyone else thinks is a good thing. We all know and accept how it works and respect the work that went into creating it. Er... well I don't know the history behind that comment, but I *didn't* know how the "virgin cache" calculation worked and I'd assumed it was just broken right now. Now I've been pointed in the right direction, I can see why it has to work that way and it all makes a lot more sense. It may be time to review my claim that I'm not interested in ordinary FTFs
  14. If you're thinking of the same story as I am, the newly-placed cache had been stocked with a special travel bug (a white jeep or something). So if you wanted to log the TB, you (probably) had to be FTF. Special TBs do add an entertaining extra dimension to the game and by definition there aren't very many of them, so I'm not surprised people go to extraordinary lengths to grab them when they can. As for regular FTFs - it's just natural human competition I think. You get to "know" the people in your area and some people enjoy racing against each other. Others don't, obviously. Personally I'm not interested in FTFs on regular caches. But on a complicated puzzle which requires real effort to solve, I do think it adds to the fun if you're trying to crack it before anyone else. I don't think I've ever actually succeeded in that though!
  15. I think it's commonly believed that if you say "yes" you won't be allowed on the plane, but while travelling to my company's head office I quite often have bits and pieces for other people, and nothing bad has ever happened to me. They just want to know about the item to make sure you haven't been tricked into taking a bomb on board. If it's in your hand luggage, they sometimes (always?) ask you to take it out and show it to them at the security point. I just can't see them being bothered by a teddy, a porcelain cow and a bunch of keyrings, however weird a set of items that might be. The problem with the spanner was, unfortunately, that even a teeny tiny spanner is on the list of things specifically banned from hand baggage.
  16. Which Event? I must have missed the listing for that?? It was listed - just at rather short notice! Which was a shame, as I had a half-formed thought that I ought to try to get up to one of the Perth events (assuming Embra residence doesn't disqualify me ). Still, these things happen and I'm sure there'll be a "next time". Anyway, thanks for the update and I'll look out for the new thread.
  17. Just a thought, but perhaps it could be made to mesh with the annual Angus Glens walking festival (around the start of June I think?) I'm sure there are lots of cachers who are keen walkers too, and the festival normally puts on a selection of guided walks for all abilities. (Declaration of interest - I've meant to go up for the walking festival for the last 3 years and have never made it, so I'm hoping someone might give me a little extra kick [])
  18. In the (very few) cases I've needed to explain what it's all about, I've always just said it's a "sort of treasure hunt" - which is perfectly true, but easy for the other person to understand. Unfortunately though, tools simply aren't allowed in hand baggage these days, so nothing you could have said would have helped with that one. There should have been notices displayed at check-in and before security. Looking on the bright side though, it's probably less embarrassing to have your own bug confiscated than someone else's!
  19. I managed to break my Garmin Quest by closing the boot of a car on it - out of warranty, and completely my fault anyway. I think at the time it would have cost about 300 pounds to replace retail. I sent it back to Garmin to see if it could be fixed - but it was beyond repair. Amazingly though, they sent me a brand new one for just 110 + VAT! When you think about it, they probably make as much money on that as they would do through a retail sale (particularly because I didn't get a second licence for the mapping), but it's just not what you expect and it pretty much guarantees that I'll buy from them again next time.
  20. Thanks HH - that sounds perfect. I'll contact you separately to get your details.
  21. Hi there I'm hoping someone can help me out here... I've got a TB in my hands which I've already had for a bit too long, and I'm about to head off on an overseas trip (but not to anywhere the TB wants to go!) With one thing and another I don't think I'll be able to drop the TB off before I go, so I wondered if anyone could take it off my hands? If you're willing to let me have your address, I can just post it to you. The TB is currently in Edinburgh and it's aiming to explore Scotland, so I'm really looking for someone from north of the Border. If anyone in Edinburgh can help, that would be ideal, so as not to mess up the TB's travels too much! Thanks for reading. Cheers Morton
  22. We're into heavy-duty barrack-room lawyering here, but you're only allowed to use a right of way to go from place to place. So even if you'd successfully asserted your right to walk down the path, you wouldn't have the right to stop and watch the show. Or to take a more common example, you're not strictly speaking allowed to stop for a picnic, and the landowner is within their rights to ask you to move on if you do. (Different rules apply in Scotland)
  23. I have a Quest and I love it, but going back to a comment in the original post, it is definitely NOT a replacment for OS maps. Rather, it's a replacement for a road atlas. You get roads (even the most minor ones) and some major features like public parks and rivers, but no more detail than that. I've no experience of the other products that have been mentioned, but I'd expect a similar caution to apply to anything primarily intended for automotive use. Don't get me wrong - I'd recommend it any day - it's so liberating to never have to worry about navigating while you're driving. But the mapping is quite limited once you're out of the car.
  24. Oh, one other thing... make sure your register on the Garmin website to get notifications of firmware updates, because they're putting them out every couple of months just now.
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