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And here i thought i was the only person on the planet who pretty much only used my phone to, you know,, talk on! I use my phone for all sorts of stuff when I'm at home or work or otherwise close to a charger. When I'm out and about, it's put away and only used when needed. All the other features are nice, but it is, primarily, a phone. Smartphones have been touted as "the end of boredom." On the hand, some say we're losing our creativity by being entertained. (No, that was inane 1950's television that turned our minds to mush. ) However, while sitting waiting for an appointment, if there are no good magazines and no one to talk with, what should we do, practice origami with dollar bills or broaden our knowledge with a smartphone? I just don't use my phone that way very much if I can't plug it in. I may need to call someone or look up something important and the phone is no use to me if it's dead. I know other people use their phones more heavily away from home and allow their children to use them, but that doesn't work for me.

And here i thought i was the only person on the planet who pretty much only used my phone to, you know,, talk on! I use my phone for all sorts of stuff when I'm at home or work or otherwise close to a charger. When I'm out and about, it's put away and only used when needed. All the other features are nice, but it is, primarily, a phone. Smartphones have been touted as "the end of boredom." On the hand, some say we're losing our creativity by being entertained. (No, that was inane 1950's television that turned our minds to mush. ) However, while sitting waiting for an appointment, if there are no good magazines and no one to talk with, what should we do, practice origami with dollar bills or broaden our knowledge with a smartphone?

Well, there's Cindy, a TB made from a cinder block, but we don't talk about her weight. There's also "Barry", a 3 foot long piece of railroad track.

The first hands-on videos, the Garmin press videos and the Garmin news mail only talk about GPS and glonass.

No - it isn't. Only a blank sheet of paper would be less rigid. Is your system a blank sheet of paper? I start to think that our understanding of what rigidity means differ, or maybe rather we differ with respect to what concept we apply the term rigid to. Somehow your point seems to be that using the existing system (without the need of using any feature one does want to use) would have effects on the creative process of cache hiders and would them make think in certain directions only they have seen in classical caches. My way of thinking is very formal. I argued about the available tools that make setting up certain ideas convenient and not on the process of coming up with ideas. So I applied the term rigid to the technological tool and its limitations and you applied to something different. Not in my understanding of rigidity. As complexity is regarded, I just have in mind to allow everything from very simple to very complex. If you look at the matter from your point of view, yes. If you look at it from the technological point of view, no. See the above. You talk about coming up about the phase of coming up with ideas and I talk about the phase of making the implementation of already available ideas reasonable convenient so that people will not throw them away just due to implementational inconveniences that do not seem to make sense to me. I think that limiting the description to 1000 characters, no option for waypoint up and download etc will discourage some people from implementing some of their ideas for lab caches. Suppose there existed no computers. Then many ideas never would be checked as only a small group of people would be willing to get involved in cumbersome manual work. Of course that's only an analogy that does not match the lab cache case 1:1, but maybe you get that from the example that we talk about two different things. That certainly could be. There also could be other reasons we are not aware of. Asking the question why there is this limit is legitimate in any case. I would be happy anyway if the lab experiment is not central for how the future of geocaching will look like. This is certainly nothing one can argue about. It is hard to discuss only about facts if Groundspeak is promoting lab caches in the way they are doing it. Actually, the main issue I have is not with their experiments and how it is set up, but with the language with which it is promoted. Cezanne

If it is a right of way easement, then the land still belongs to the landowner, the government just has the legal right to build and maintain a road there, and people have the right to drive on it. So you'd ask the landowner then. Sometimes the property might actually change hands, though. For interstate highways, it's normally not just an easement, the government takes title to the land through eminent domain. So if you wanted to put a cache in, say, a rest area, In those cases, the state department of transportation might need to give permission. It may be worth it to reach out to some of the local cache owners to get a feel for what they had to do. One last note - the caching guidelines talk about "adequate" permission, not explicit. So if a county has an open geocaching policy on park land, you don't need to ask, just make sure your cache follows whatever rules the county put out there.

Hi RaeRobyn, you could create an event in your area to meet up with other local cachers and talk to them directly. I was thinking of doing this. I went to school in Gloucester which isn’t relevant to your question but partly why I posted a reply!

You can add me to the list. I am EFHutton (geocaching) and my call is N7SMT. I have several handhelds, including two Baofeng portables (2 meter and 440 MHz) and two Wouxon portables (2 meter and 220 MHz). I have used them all to coordinate geocaching excursions with other ham friends who cache. The Baofeng radios are small, powerful and very inexpensive....almost disposable! At around $40.00 each, they work well for the price. A bit difficult to program with repeater frequencies, but once you get the hang of it, it is ok. The Wouxon radios are a bit more rugged and a bit easier to program too. I dropped one of them in Puget Sound after a fishing excursion and it took on some water and stopped working. I dried it out thoroughly and turned it on and it has worked fine ever since. You can't do that with most cell phones! As far as using them hiking, camping or, of course, geocaching....they are more than a life saver. Both radios have a built in FM broadcast receiver that picks up local radio stations fairly well. If there is no one to talk to, you can still listen to music. The batteries last a decent amount of time and are easily re-chargable. The drop chargers that come with the radios work on both 120VAC and 12VDC, not to mention that they both have AA and AAA battery packs that you can buy separately if you want to go that route. The Baofeng radios can be programmed with all of the FRS/GMRS frequencies and with the higher wattage, they work very well on road trips between cars or in thick woods hunting for that elusive 4 difficulty cache. If you have non-ham friends along on the trip, you can talk to their FRS radios without too much trouble. I have been known to use my handheld radios to talk to friends in Eastern Washington while they were camping.....and I was in Seattle! Where they were, there was no phone service, but a ham radio was able to get there no problem. Granted, I was using a simplex repeater system that forwarded my signal over the mountains, but it worked great anyway! I have also noticed that most ham radio operators that you will run into are just as friendly as most of the geocachers that you have run into. They are more than happy to help you out with your set up, as a geocacher would be to help you find that tough cache. They pretty much go hand-in-hand! Another interesting tidbit about ham radio is that most NASA astronauts are also ham radio operators. Kinda makes me proud to be a part of such an elite group. I just HAD to put my two cents in. Thanks for creating this thread! -Dave (N7SMT and EFHutton)

Can you talk to the cache owner again? Since they know it's not there anymore, if they'd archive it, that would save you a lot of steps.

Again we probably talk about different things. I did not have side events in mind when I wrote my post, but rather events which are not at all connected to each other, just happen to be too close in distance or time to each other. If one gets denied an event, the easiest way is to organize it nevertheless and outside of gc.com. This already happens for event types that are not longer tolerated on gc.com - no crystal ball needed. I do not expect that mega events will end up with less activities due to the new guidelines. Yes - we probably do talk about different things - because you took a portion of dialogue which revolved around mega events and associated side events and either misunderstood it or just ignored it - accidentally or deliberately - I don't know which, and proceeded with a different argument altogether and also introduced the idea that there are secret caching cliques out there would deliberately organise clandestine / members only events which deliberately exclude the uninitiated Could we just draw a line under all that and let the thread return to its original focus before it comes completely off the rails and disappears down the rabbit hole? I too doubt that mega events will end up with fewer activities due to the new guidelines - so there's no problem there either

Same here. I receive and send on average five emails a day in this hobby. Most are people who don't/won't enter the forums. All my other communication is by email as well. People talk to me on the phone too.

Maybe you are right. I encountered these two phrases in some kind of a corporate talk and they were used interchangeably there.

The bit I've highlighted in red is probably what scares me most about this cache quality push, not so much for my own hides which I visit fairly regularly anyway just for my own satisfaction that all's well (and because I put them in places I like to visit), but for some of the excellent ones I've enjoyed over the years that are well-made, well-concealed from muggles and simply don't need regular maintenance. A nano in a busy city might need its log scroll and/or seal replaced every few months, but the same isn't true of a remotely-placed rugged cache with a proper logbook that might only get a couple of visits a year. To fill in a dull evening last week (and to avoid all the endless political talk about our Federal election), I went through the hundred caches I've given FPs to. Of those, 9 have been archived, 23 have had some maintenance done during their life, but the other 68 as best I could tell have never had any maintenance at all (no NMs logged and the only OMs just said everything's fine). They're still the original container with its original logbook and are still in great condition. These aren't just all new caches either; of the ones that haven't been archived, 41 are more than 5 years old and 9 of those are more than 10 years old. The oldest was placed in 2001 and, after being replaced in 2002 following a fire, hasn't had or needed any attention since. A good container in a hiding place protecting it from the elements and muggles will last pretty much indefinitely without any owner attention, so it really doesn't matter whether the owner is responsible and still active or not, the cache remains there to be enjoyed by generations of cachers to come. I'd hate to see any well-intentioned enforcement of regular maintenance designed to rid the world of decrepit micros result in the loss of many of these fine caches either because their owners have left the game or are unwilling to put in the often substantial effort needed to visit them regularly when there's no need to.

But what if I really really need to talk to you? Just kidding. It would be nice if there was an Ignore All Messages option.

I like it. Until I don't get drawn and then I will talk mad trash about everyone who got one! ;) Actually, the nice thing about 2.0 is that won't be the case. I will know I didn't randomly get drawn and there isn't anything you can do about it. However, I would like to see this applied to webcam caches. People with over 25 webcam caches and who opt in get drawn to make a new list of webcam caches. I would love that...because I have found over 25 webcam caches! However, that took a lot of miles and work. It was not easy. I love webcam caches!

I've taught geocaching to kids at church a few times. I try to keep it simple, and make it as "hands on" as possible. Here's what I do for a 1-hour intro to geocaching: In class, I start by explaining the basic concept: someone hides a container and publishes the location, then others go to the location and look for the container. Then I briefly explain coordinates, using a globe to explain longitude and latitude. I briefly explain how GPS works as follows: Before the class, I hang brightly colored yarn from the ceiling. During class, I explain that GPS receivers use radio waves to measure how far away they are from GPS satellites. Then I use one of the pieces of yarn to show that a distance (the length of the yarn) from a satellite (the spot on the ceiling) defines a circle. Then I show that two pieces of yarn define two locations (where the circles intersect). Then I show that three pieces of yarn defines which of those two locations it is, because the three distances match at only one point. All this takes less than 5 minutes. It's much easier to show it than it is to explain how to show it. Then I show them different containers—at least one container of each size, and at least a couple that are camouflaged. I pass around a few of the containers, and then we look at what's inside an example container: a stash note, which lets me talk about the basic rules printed on my stash notes:If you take something, then leave something. Sign the log. Put the container back where you found it. [*]a log, which lets me talk about geocaching.com account names ("Mine is 'niraD', which is just my first name spelled backward.")[*]trade items, which let me talk about trading fairly, and what kinds of things should not be placed in caches[*]TBs and geocoins, which lets me talk about the rules for trackables I also pass around all these things as we discuss them. Then I show a cache page, emphasizing the type, size, difficulty, and terrain. I explain briefly what each of these things mean. For example, I explain that 1-star terrain is easy and wheelchair accessible, and that 5-star terrain is very hard and probably requires you to know how to use special equipment like scuba gear, climbing gear, or a boat. I don't try to cover what all the terrain ratings mean, let alone what all the terrain ratings mean in detail. Finally, I take them outside to an area where I've hidden more than a dozen containers. I have them stand behind a line and raise their hands when they spot a cache. (This is just basic crowd control.) I call on the ones who raise their hands and have them point to the caches they saw. The first several caches are spotted quickly, but I make sure there are a few really challenging ones. Depending on the time remaining and their interest level, I may offer hints for these last few caches. I print Groundspeak's PDF brochure and have it available for any kids/parents who are interested in pursuing geocaching further. All this fills an hour class nicely. When I have more time, I take them on a hike so we can find actual geocaches, and so they can take turns using a GPSr. I specifically do not take them to the neighborhood caches near the church.

Yeah that is really frustrating. :-( I am not 100% certain I will be at GW yet, but if I am I will for sure look for you again. If you want I could be a wing man if you want to talk to them.

I updated the WF site to use Groundspeak's new API. Let me know if anyone experiences any issues. Here's something funny: I was asked if I wanted to list Kit (and perhaps the WF site) in the list of API partners. Uhh... Groundspeak, not unless you want to thoroughly confuse the mess out of the community, listing third-party Wherigo services as a partner on one hand and reviewers saying you can't talk about it on the other. That might not be the best of ideas until you lift the reviewer ban.

I go through phases, I might check in once a week and at other times I have checked in once a month. Yes, FB is where it's at and I addressed this quite some time ago in another thread. Vendors and designers left this venue for a number of reasons. I will only speak for myself though. For the first 6 years, I designed for fun and not for profit. I designed geocoins and re-invested any $$$ I made into helping me attend geocoinfest and build a website and give coins away whether people were aware of it or not. Considering I was lucky to get out 4 designs in a year, it was more of a break-even thing for me and I loved every minute of it. My interest has slowed over the past couple of years as I have moved into different interests as far as designing goes. In 2013 I became an official business, no more hobby for me but my designs were going outside of the geocoin world. I'm still keeping my foot in the geocoin waters but as a business you have to learn to grow in order to survive. Everything changes and the geocoin forum has changed a lot over the years, even trackables have morphed into it's own animal. Here is what I find as a vendor to be the toughest issues to date. I work a full time job so when I come home my time is very limited. I also take classes to improve my education. I've got my feet in several different world and I have had to learn to pick and choose wisely as to where to spend my time. Since not everything I do is trackable, I can't come here and talk about my "stuff". I get that and I'm not complaining about it. However I can't hit all the venues that are available to me as a business person. Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Pintrest, personal website, personal blog, etc. I know it seems like it should all be easy but each on of those venues is it's own animal and learning how to navigate those and use them to a business' best advantage is time consuming. I can't tell you how overwhelmed I feel at times trying to figure out these new worlds and how to use them to my advantage. The forum here is very singular so that is limiting for any vendor who dabbles in anything outside of geocoins. I still come here and announce geocoins but I did get bad about it for awhile. I will continue to post geocoins for sale here as I design them but I just won't spend as much time here like I once did. The above paragraph leads me to another issue. I do believe the geocoin forum is a community and at one time I was not pleased when a vendor would come here and only "sell" their geocoin without much interaction with the community. They only saw us as a money machine to buy their coins. I do NOT want to be that vendor, granted it's not like I'm pumping out a coin design every month but I still feel strongly about people using a venue to sell something but never really care about the community. Now that I am in a different position, I find that FB is where I can still interact with everyone but I have my "own" community. What I mean by that is; I can talk about all my stuff and I can talk about geocoins, I can post links and pictures and for the most part, everyone who is there has elected to be there. Instead of me scrambling to be everywhere, I have a couple of places to interact with the community who elects to be there. I run contests, I promote my items, you name it I can do it. Everyone expects me to be doing that. I would love to have the old days back where we all got involved in geocoin discussions and excited about designs but those days have come and gone. Vendors and designers have to go where the action is for business reasons. FB accomplishes that right now and maybe in 3 years it will be someplace else. By all means, stay here and keep this place alive, it's still an excellent format to discuss all things geocoin and learn but at the same time we all have to find the balance in our lives. Please keep in mind, I've only touched on one or two facets of why people don't come here anymore but I'm merely speaking from a business perspective. I will always come here and announce coins and post numbers/editions and interact as time permits. For me this was the beginning of it all and will always hold a special place in my heart. tsun

I was inspired once again to come here to the forums to discuss maps after attempting to plan a hike for this weekend. To find new caches I need to hike in unknown areas. If I were doing a small area city cache adventure then the current maps might suffice. To find new caching trails in many miles of mountains, I need a big view of the available caches. I find trails by looking for cache trails. It is very frustrating to keep having to reload the caches. My internet connection can get bogged down and what is supposed to be a few fun moments of searching for new cache trails turns into a long frustrating exercise in testing my internet speed. I end up thinking about quitting caching and stop my search early. I suspect new cachers who use their phones may not care about the new map differences. But it's the old cachers who find a lot of caches who are the ones who pay to keep the electricity on at Groundspeak Headquarters, so I would hope that they will pay attention to how many people are reporting in on this. Pay attention to what exactly people are complaining about, and who is not happy. I am considering writing an old fashion letter, this issue is so important to me, since it doesn't seem to draw any attention to talk about it on the forums. Anyone else who wants to join me on this: Groundspeak Headquarters 837 N 34th St #300, Seattle, WA 98103

Hi, last week I hosted an EarthCache Event. I called it EarthCache Event because the focus was on geology. We started the day with two field trips. I gave a talk at the main event about rocks, the Alpine orogeny and many other topics. A big part was how a geocacher can create his own EarthCache (all steps from an idea to the publish). Two geoawares visited the event so every question had been answered. The discussion after the talk took some hours. All logs were 100% positive, so I can encourage other Geocachers to host an event like this. EarthCache Event Here are some pictures: Let the Earth be your teacher! lumbricus

I can't listen to the Geocaching podcasts or the advertised "10 Best Geocaching Songs" while I'm using the app to geocache? That's crazy talk! What's the point of a Geocaching Mix tape if I can't listen to it while I look for geocaches? https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2018/03/the-top-10-best-geocaching-songs/

Thank you for your quick reply. I disabled the Cachetur Assistant and that did produce the desired results on the map. Now to talk with Thomfre.

Alright, fine! Again you win, geocache GOD's. I will change my freaking log count, you win. Boy talk about feeling brow beaten and beat up. Holy cow, I have never met a group such as this! I am beginning to question whether or not I want to continue geocaching if this is how this hobby is conducted. And I do not buy for one minute this is to help me because I am new. I think some of you just enjoy being over powering and suppressing what someone else is trying to do. What is this a right of passage every new geocacher has to go through to earn their stripes? Is this the hazing part of geocaching the newbies have to experience before being considered cachers? I am a member of the worlds oldest, and largest fraternity and we would never put our new members through anything like this, even if they do make a mistake. We certainly have a lot more tact and respect than people here. If this is the true representation of geocaching I think I am going to give it up entirely. I must say though a lot of you are not doing this hobby any good and a bad example of it with the way you talk to people here.

I'm hoping someone can help me out. I built a cartridge and all during the Beta testing it worked flawlessly, everything triggering properly, no lags or glitches. Most of the changes I made along the way were minor such as zone location, when tasks appeared, and such. I did a final Beta test and it worked great. The only thing I did after the final Beta test was add a media picture to the cartridge. I posted the cache and the first person to try it said it crashed at a certain point. I went out to check it and sure enough, it crashed on mine also. I removed the media from the cartridge and tried again and it still crashes. It works fine on iphone but shuts down my Garmin Oregon 450. It always shuts it down in the same place, When I "Talk" to a character. The actions that are supposed to happen when I "Talk" to the character are: "Show a message to player", "Set 2 different Tasks active true", and "Set Task Complete true". Luckily this happens in the 3rd Zone and only 10 minutes into the cartridge. I have two other Zones set up exactly like the one that crashes and they work ok. There is an Object and a Character in each zone. The player must pick up the object and talk to the character. There are only 4 Zones active when the Garmin crashes. Here is the last few lines of the log. I can't see anything of significance: Nov 19 was when it started crashing Sat Nov 9 13:31:47 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Thu Nov 14 10:29:14 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Thu Nov 14 12:49:12 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Thu Nov 14 14:05:26 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Tue Nov 19 18:58:59 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Tue Nov 19 19:07:54 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Thu Nov 21 15:52:57 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 Thu Nov 21 17:13:55 2013 INFO [Engine]: Logging level changed from 2 to 3 I use the Groundspeak builder if that is of use. Thanks in advance and I hope someone can help Zorkan Heneron