Search the Community

Hello, I was invited a few weeks ago to this site by a friend and veteran geocacher here, because my son and I were really interested in jumping into the game. We both knew what it was about, and I've played a similar game before via other sites. Long story short, I've been trying to submit a cache for 3 weeks, but the local reviewer in Japan ("ShinyOrbital") will not approve our cache, has even brought my nationality up as a negative issue. He is retired, so I am guessing he's got little better to do than power trip on here. He has been extremely condescending and rude. The issue: He says we need to find 20 caches before we can hide one. I mentioned the official guidelines merely encourage this, and do not require it, and the official customer support here even told me the same. Still, "ShinyOrbital" refuses to approve our cache. My son was very excited, and I am feeling very disappointed in the lack of professionality. Who does this kind of crap to families just trying to play the game??? We have been out looking for caches together, and took two weekends to make sure our hide met the guideline criteria. I work full-time, so this time is precious. This reviewer, ShinyOrbital, mentioned that "we Japanese" don't want inexperienced (i.e. foreign cachers) just jumping in and playing. I mentioned my family is Japanese and that I was invited by a veteran cacher in the area. Emily at customer support said the same reviewer will be informed that 20 finds are not required. Shiny Orbital doubled down. He's stringing us along, and even mocked me sarcastically, and then asked "What is your problem?" All I ask is that if 20 finds are required, the guidelines be updated to reflect that. Even in the Japanese language the guide says 20 finds are only encouraged, and not required. I refuse to talk to this xenophobic troll anymore known as "ShinyOrbital," and if there's nothing that can be done by Geocaching.com to rein in losers like this, making people who just wanna play the game wait and wait and wait just for some sick fun, I'm going to go to some other site. I don't want to. I like this one. But sheesh. Exasperating. Anyone dealt with a reviewer like this before? -ZGBob

When I first read the blog post, my initial thoughts were that this sounds redundant with souvenirs and with the summer promotions. Seemed silly to have another digital token. But after listening to Bryan on the HQ Podcast and on Challenge Talk, it's clear that Treasures have the potential to be much more. It sounds like they will mostly be permanent, not too easy, and will have more flexibility. Souvenirs have completely lost all meaning for me as they've become so common and the summer promotions don't excite me either, but I am looking forward to Treasures. Of course how much I actually care for them will come down to how much HQ develops the feature and builds on them, but I'm definitely excited for what they can be. Will they motivate me to go out and find caches more than I already am from Challenge Caches and of their intrinsic pleasure? I wouldn't expect by much, but maybe at the margins.

Not exactly a hoop, but an eager request... I once asked permission to place two EarthCaches in a state park. I was developing them with 80 Earth &Space students (high school freshmen and sophomores, mostly). The park ranger I was talking with to plan the trip asked if he could be involved. My Co-teacher and I gladly accepted his offer/request. It ended up going very well. It was a cold day. We had rented the shelter and lit fires in the fireplaces. The ranger gave a nice (short) talk about the geology of the park and then we broke up in groups to gather the information we needed. He guided the students to answers they couldn't find, explained things they didn't know, and made suggestions to improve their working ideas. We walked a couple of trails and generally had a great day. My co-teacher and I brought supplies to make Smores and hotdogs for all the kids to eat after they finished their explorations. We did publish two EarthCaches. Cache by Mrs A, Mrs V & the kids: Big Clifty & Little Clifty Falls EarthCache GCZBWG Fossils, Tunnel Falls, & Bough's Folly EarthCache GC10EBW

Thank you, that's very kind! FYI the person who wrote that (thebruce0) is a vlogger with a channel called Cache the Line (with a much bigger following than mine), he knows who I am and we've collaborated a bit. I agree with his points about daily geocaching vlogging, it's hard to create a daily vlog and make it high quality unless that's what you're doing full time, which we aren't. I consider myself a geocaching filmmaker since my main love is creating GIFF entries, though one time I challenged myself to create two weeks of daily vlogs to learn about vlogging and I burned out after around 9 days. It's a lot of work. The people who make good geocaching vlogs have good outgoing personalities where I'm an engineer who would rather talk about geocaching analytically. Geocaching videos are a niche subject and a lot of people who participate in geocaching would rather be outside geocaching than watching geocaching videos. So for us who create geocaching content, it's really a labor of love for something we enjoy doing.

Where: Astoria Brewing CO Address: 144 11th St, Astoria, Or, 97103 When: Janurary 4, 5:00pm to 7:00 pm Why: To talk about geocaching in the Astoria Area. Cache page: https://coord.info/GCAZNY2 More info to come.

This puzzle cache was a 5 difficulty and went unfound for a couple of years. It was eventually found, and has since been archived. I have what I believe are the right coords. Any one know what the GC number was, and anyone know anyone who found it, who I can bounce my coords off of, and talk about how they solved it? I have picture of the puzzle, it was a short story, with the coords buried in it.

Sad I missed @bootron last night on the Geocaching Talk Network's livestream about everything Waymarking. Just watched the recorded video and it was interesting seeing the history of the site and how it has grown over the years. Thanks bootron for everything you do to keep both Geocaching and Waymarking possible! Hopefully more people will start Waymarking For those wanting to watch the recorded live stream, here's the video link:

Same with a lot of high Terrain rated caches... Well to be fair, there's not really a universal objective measure. One person might believe that a single fizzy is a true 5 difficulty for them, or in their region. Go there from a place plastered with all DTs and that 5.0 Fizzy challenge is clearly overrated. A newer cacher putting out a challenge cache might not consider such accomplishment as easy and 'overrate' it relative to loads of others in the local community. Ultimately the rating is up to the CO, and unless we know the CO and the region, it's hard to say whether a cache is 'objectively' (or intentionally) over or under rated... For both D and T, I think the jump from 4.5 to 5 could be either an underrating or overrating. For me, a 4.5D puzzle could be very hard, then next to it a 5.0 programming puzzle - that's a step down for difficulty for me, but for someone else without that specialty knowledge, it would be an easy 5.0+ difficulty (unless of course they just ask someone for the solution, which typically happens around here). So I think the 5.0 D or T is a rating all its own, and is hard to classify it universally in relation to the 4.5 rating, because most of the time, that 'specialty' tick (equipment or knowledge) is either going to itself be easy or hard depending on who you talk to.

I wish I could talk to someone in person, but I've been told to contact the land manager in another state. This will be an urban cache.

This is a place where EVERYBODY can talk about the Hoosier state. Feel free to talk about TBs, Geocaches, GeoArts, etc., but keep it within Indiana. Thanks!

Greetings from the WISA Woodsat HQ! After the announcement of WISA Woodsat satellite trackable (TB9GB8G) mid August, we have over 6200 people on the watch list! That also means that I have received a fair amount of messages regarding the satellite itself, the procedure of logging it, launch schedule and many others. Unfortunately I am not able to answer them one by one, so, let's talk satellites in this discussion thread. The most common question is, how you can log the satellite trackable. I have added the instructions to the trackable page https://coord.info/TB9GB8G. The thing to note is that you can only do that AFTER the satellite has been launched. The trackable code is only visibile in the photos taken by the satellite itself with its selfie-camera. You can follow WISA Woodsat project progress on https://wisawoodsat.space. We have blogs and videos showing how the satellite materials are made, how they are machined, and tested. You can also find WISA Woodsat on Instagram and Twitter with the handles @wisawoodsat and #wisawoodsat. Anything else you would like to know about the satellite?

That's fairly rare. How rare depends, I suppose, on which part of the world. These are what keep the game interesting! I've found a handful that have been waiting longer than that for their first find (memorable, all of 'em), and own one that still hasn't seen a cacher reach GZ for 9+ years now. I'm sure some people have their eyes on it. Oh so Blue in Belize was 8 years before the first find, and there was quite the forum discussion leading up to it. I almost went because I was nearby. Coulda shoulda woulda... (All talk, no walk.)

I'm curious that in the Blog post they talk about tackling a T5 climb or solving a tricky field puzzle and say they're celebrating the diversity of embracing your own version of adventure: Adventure takes on a unique form for each of us, whether it’s the thrill of climbing to reach a T5, solving a tricky field puzzle, or exploring a new area of your neighborhood with Adventure Lab®. What’s important is that you’re out there, embracing your version of adventure. This year, we’re celebrating this diversity with a special souvenir! But you can only get the souvenir by doing a stage (not the whole Adventure, just one stage) of an AL. I guess for me the "adventure" will be the long drive through Sydney's traffic snarls to get to the nearest available AL stage, but that's not an "adventure" I'm all that keen to embrace..

Sorry, I have no idea what you want to say here. Maybe my english is not sufficient. Lets try again. By "Picking up" a TB I meant someone "retrieves it from the cache" so that does not include a visit log but only a "Retrieve log" What I meant with hoping for a "surprising log" is that scenario that the TB somehow gets lost without any trace so you gave up any hope but suddenly the TB shows up again and was correctly logged (grabbed+placed). Probably in that case even I would be happy about a meaningful(!) discovery log I certainly don't talk about "your" or "cerberus1s" logs which apparently (at least in my experience) are an exeption to the rule. And yes visit logs are usually by far more annoying than discovery logs because of their volume.

I want to start by saying I worked with many reviewers (probably something like 12) and I generally find them amazing people doing great work. If anyone starts digging after reading this, I want to also state explicitly that it is not about my usual local reviewer, who I find to be extremely professional and helpful. I am trying to publish an earthcache and I am finding the way the particular reviewer who's looking at the cache approaches the process unacceptable. The process has been going for way over a month already and hasn't really moved forward during that period. It's generally been going something like this: - the guy asks me a question - I answer somewhat extensively - the guy takes over a week to answer and asks me another question, not at all related to what he asked before. If he does expand on his previous question, he seems to not have read my answer at all, at best having skimmed it In his most recent response, today, he asked me to change the cache entirely, dropping 4/5 questions. He didn't provide any good reasons, his reasons were twofold: 1. "This is not interesting to anyone" - I find that to be purely offensive and not really professional in any way. It is interesting, at the very least, to me, which is why I am trying to publish a cache about it. 2. "This is not geology" - In one case, he used that argument when he was talking about a question which says, literally. "How does this [high concentration of heavy metals] affect the geology of the soil?". In the other case, he said this because the cache talks about a river which was regulated by humans - but the fact that the river was regulated has nothing to do with the subject of the cache, I only mention it once, just so that people are aware, and I only talk about actual geological aspects of the river, not it being regulated. Needless to say, I do not ask any questions about the regulation or human interference in the river at all. I believe the guy to be completely wrong. But even if he were right about the crux of the matter, I find the way he doesn't address what I said to him and changes his mind about what the problem is constantly, to be unbearable. My question to you is, if he continues to be so difficult, is there anything I can do about it? Can I ask for the cache to be handled by a different reviewer? Can I ask Groundspeak to double-check our messages and ask him to be more reasonable? Are there any other steps, formal or informal, that I can take? I am asking this here, not in the earthcache forum, as I believe the actual question may be relevant to people outside of earthcaching, but facing problems with reviewers more generally. Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hmmmm, seems like I had a small breakthrough here (after several breakdowns): I created this Input: Then I made this flow to handle the "On get input": Then I put a "Talk to girl" command on the "Girl" character and eneabled/handled it: Now, if I click "Yes" the girl is moved to my inventory, and if I click "No" the message is shown with an "ok" button. If I click the "ok" button I am returned to the main screen and can try to accept helping her instead. There are so many "Unhandled" places to click that it's a bit of a jungle at first. Is this a good way to handle this, or are there better options available. Don't get med wrong, I'm pretty happy to get this far. I also wonder how to prevent the input "Talk to girl" from running when she has been moved to my inventory and I click on her?

"There's probably some "clever" bit of code in either the app or the phone's GPS service that thinks it can save a bit of battery life by not taking readings when it thinks you're stationary. I've worked with - and on- that clever code. These days it's a feature in the correlators called "static navigation" that can be enabled, disabled, or ignored. A GPS never knows where it is. I knows within N% confidence that it' somewhere inside a circle of R meters. As the ionosphere changes and the constellation moves, that circle and its assumed position in the point cloud will change. If a GPS in your car reported your position as moving back 2m NNE this second, 3NW this second, 5m SE this second, and so on while you were waiting at a stoplight, you would through it through the window, especially if that drift took you into an adjacent land and the girl in the box shouted out "rerouting1". As some point, MOST users want 'stopped' to mean stopped. If you're a geocacher looking for a tube stuck in the ground (ew!) you may actually want that, but most civilians don't. That mode is called Constant Navigation. I didn't know what it was called when I wrote this page 18 years ago (I wasn't even sure it was still public, actually) but I graphed three of the most popular GPS receivers in .. 2006(!) I sat a GPS 60Cs (the one with the stupid chip that would lose lock in tall grass) the 60CSx and the Magellan Explorist 600 and collected the location that it reported to the computer over the course of many hours. The 60CS basically didn't know where it was. The 60CSx of that era roamed all over, traveling over a mile while..sitting at my desk while the Magellan - which was famous at the time for doing a bit of aggressive position averaging - moved less than 1/5th of that, with about half of that in one short burst. Those last two actually used the same GPS chip, the SirfStar III, and I now believe that one used static navigation setting and one used constant navigation. https://www.mtgc.org//robertlipe/showdown/index.html I think Atlas' answer is probably the "right" one, IF there is an actual measurable difference. In the old days, people were more meticulous and more "gadgety" in respectful use of their equipment. Now, it's taken for granted and it's much more likely to talk up to a rock, drop a box behind it, snap 'mark' and walk away instead of taking 30 minutes of averaged locations as was common when coordinates came in roman numerals. As for the tease at the end that was fashionable in that era, I lost interest in caring about such things and was still able to go outside and play instead...

There is a limit to the distance you can update the coordinates to. Also hopefully it does not infringe on a proximity to another cache. Talk to your reviewer they can definately help and should be able to quickly tell you if there is a problem.

I use both my Android and an Etrex 22x. I've been checking out different apps on my phone. I've been bouncing between Geooh Go and the regular app. Geooh Go has some cool features the regular app does not have. I like having access to Wherigo and Project-gc directly in the app. I don't like the GPS function so I use my Etrex 22x for gps. I use my phone to log caches in real time with the talk to text feature to create my logs.

I'll just say that it's not too hard to find once you start looking. Talk about hidden in plain sight!

Yeah... I went to find a couple caches for a promotion. Most had maintenance issues, but one was only the top of a bison tube. People were finding that "top" and claiming it a find for over a year. A jerk like me (by talk at events) comes in and NM it. The only NM on that cache... The "CO" got in a huff and archived all caches in the park. I picked up the bison top and a couple others two weeks later, but there's a bunch still there. People were happy to find a top and claim it a find...

Talk to text?

Skimming topics, i decided to dip into the other remaining source of GPS expertise, the GSAK forum. (Duly noting that OP is on a Mac and this does them no/little good.) https://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=36383&view=findpost&p=279765 concludes that there is MTP voodoo within GSAK (!?!?) Perhaps, this being a Microsoft creation as part of Windows Media, plinking around media files is easier there and GSAK somehow hooks to some kind of OS interface to do this. (We've also had people declare the end of Garmin MTP about every six months since the original Nuvi 350, so I don't know if the 67 is really really the end or not...) Still, when I see authoritative-sounding MTP Library things on the web saying things like: It seems quite likely that if Clyde came to me before May, 2008, I'd have told him to take off as it's MS-only and after May, 2008, I'd have told him to take off as sounds like the standard compliance is poor and reading things like https://github.com/libmtp/libmtp (search for 'kext') encouraging people to disable their USB mass storage devices, which requires unlocking several security checks, it just sounds like a bad idea even on MacOS. (I can be a jerk like that...) In that same doc, we have both: "Windows Media Player apparently never close the session to an MTP device." ... "The "Unix way" of running small programs that open the device, do something, then close the device, isn't really working with such devices and you cannot expect to have command line tools like the mtp examples work with them." You may be able to think of a program that very much embraces The Unix Way. It seems likely that you'd be deeply annoyed at GPSBabel running forever or requiring you to reboot between times of talking to your GPS. That's just incredibly dumb, but that's 2000's era Microsoft for you. So even now, if they were to ask, the words "take off" may not appear literally in my response, but without someone else paying for the engineering to bring a quality MTP implementation into GPSBabel along with a device testing budget, I don't see it happening. Heck, Maybe Garmin had to develop one for Basecamp that's usable open source (hahahahaha). Maybe iCaching is interested in developing some kind of code to talk to these things, but I don't particularly see this landing on my desk as an accepted action item without some divine intervention. (That happened on the 60 Cx...) Since I hadn't finished reading the entire internet before posting that (workin' on it!) it possible that https://openmtp.ganeshrvel.com/ may be better, worse, or at least broken in a _different_ way. It doesn't look particularly Mac-like for a Mac app, but I have no vote. Working + Homely > Attractive + Dysfunctional (This is also solid dating advice...)

Ok, let me ask you a question: Why does a magazine cover depicting a shot black kid (I suppose this is the cover in question) need to be on a geocache page? What does it add to the cache and the caching experience of the family trying to find it? Also, you talk about deflecting, but you don't say what the communication with the reviewer about placing a cache on a postal structure looked like.

I'm closing this thread because this is the forum for discussing Geocaching.com's smartphone apps - not for discussing handheld GPS units. There is a separate forum section to talk about GPS and Technology. There's a pinned thread at the top of that forum section, and the most recent post in that forum is in a thread asking the same question.