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Gsak (geocaching Swiss Army Knife)


ClydeE

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Thanks for the reply Kai Team. It appears that GSAK is freezing up when it was extracting a compressed file. Just to be sure that it wasn't the other files in my Geocaching folder I created a GSAK folder, moved all of the compressed files that come from my pocket queries to that folder and tried again. This time I recieved a different error message stating that there was a non PKZip file. I then extracted each one of the files to the the GPX file within. During this process I did find that one of my files was corrupt. I had GSAK load up the folder of files and it worked just fine. Over the next week I will download new files from my pocket queries and see what happens.

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I am a little confused about the add a picture option on user notes.  I added a picture expecting to see the pic show up.  All I saw was the location of the pic.

 

Like this:

 

"<img src='file://C:\Documents and Settings\Dewayne Dean\My Documents\puzzler.JPG' alt='picture'><Br>"

 

is this how this is supposed to work?

Please see this post

Thanks Clyde,

 

I was looking for the photo on the notes page. :lol:

 

Awesome program.

 

Awhile back there was some discussion about being able to donate $ to GSAK after we have registered. Did anything ever come of that?

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I am a little confused about the add a picture option on user notes.  I added a picture expecting to see the pic show up.  All I saw was the location of the pic.

 

Like this:

 

"<img src='file://C:\Documents and Settings\Dewayne Dean\My Documents\puzzler.JPG' alt='picture'><Br>"

 

is this how this is supposed to work?

Please see this post

Thanks Clyde,

 

I was looking for the photo on the notes page. :lol:

 

Awesome program.

 

Awhile back there was some discussion about being able to donate $ to GSAK after we have registered. Did anything ever come of that?

Please accept my apologies for not replying to those posts.

 

The answer is no, I have not added a "donate" button to my website.

 

This probably will sound silly, but I am uncomfortable with asking for "hand outs" when I am already asking for a fee to register GSAK.

 

Perhaps GSAK is under priced and the updates should be charged for yearly or after x number of updates. I reserve my right to keep my options open, but my current model still applies (one fixed price, free updates).

 

Don't get me wrong. I am by no means making a fortune out of GSAK and I very much appreciate the fact that some users fell the product is worth more financial support than I am asking.

 

There has been a decline of registrations of late, but like last year, I put this down to USA (my biggest market) coming into the Winter season and Geocaching in general seems to go off the boil.

 

So if you do feel passionate about this issue, then you do have options. One easy way is to Register again at http://gsak.net/Register.htm

 

However this requires a fixed amount (perhaps more than you want to contribute), so the better way is to just make a payment from your PayPal account (PayPal will let you make a payment to any email address) directly to clyde at gsak dot net - that way you can specify any amount and send me a note of Christmas cheer. :D

 

Sorry if I sound like I am making this hard or don't appreciate your support and gesture. This is certainly not my intention and I hope I have explained my position.

Edited by ClydeE
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I know I just said this in email, but I wouldn't change the pricing model significantly. I think it's about perfect at $25; it's low enough that most people won't balk at it paying it for a program that's been recommended to them or that they've played with themselves for a few weeks. The thing is, people don't realize how useful GSAK is and how on top of things you are in terms of upgrades and patches and fixes until they've used it for an extended period, and at that point I think most registered users honestly feel like they're getting something for nothing. I know I do.

 

Thus, I don't think an unobtrusive Paypal link on gsak.net that says "if you think it's worth more and want to contribute further to development, feel free to click here" is the same as asking for donations.

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Thus, I don't think an unobtrusive Paypal link on gsak.net that says "if you think it's worth more and want to contribute further to development, feel free to click here" is the same as asking for donations.

Adding the same sentiment as Pasha. My guess is that only a "tiny" percent of people might think you were looking for "handouts".

 

Awesome program thanks for all your hard work and openness to user requested enhancements.

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I know I just said this in email, but I wouldn't change the pricing model significantly. I think it's about perfect at $25

 

Well, actually it is $20 :unsure:

 

Thus, I don't think an unobtrusive Paypal link on gsak.net that says "if you think it's worth more and want to contribute further to development, feel free to click here" is the same as asking for donations.

 

Hmmm, when you say it like that it doesn't sound so bad. :D

 

I am still thinking, but you have just about convinced me. :P:):)

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I am still thinking, but you have just about convinced me.  :)  :D  B)

Add my "nudge" to the list as well. It would be my PLEASURE to kick in a little to a program that is already superb, but with a support team that ALSO LISTENS and QUICKLY RESPONDS to user concerns. :P:)

 

(Are you reading my lips MAGELLAN?>??) :unsure:B)

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While Clyde is thinking about adding a "donate" button (I can understand his reservation in our cynical world, although careful wording may be the solution to that), I've sent a small token of my appreciation via PayPal to clyde at gsak dot net, as he suggested we could above.

 

I'd encourage others who appreciate the enormous value of GSAK and Clyde's remarkable dedication to customer service to fire up your PayPal account (Clyde's email address was already in my PayPal account's drop down, since I'd paid him via PayPal when I originally registered GSAK - how easy can it be)!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Clyde!

Edited by Kai Team
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While  I've sent a small token of my appreciation via PayPal to clyde at gsak dot net, as he suggested we could above.

 

When I registered for GSAK, I didn't go throught Paypal. If I wanna send a Xmas present, how do I get to Paypal from here?

 

Edit: Disregard, went on Paypal.com and opened account.

Edited by Nomade
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Very nice program, clyde. I plan on purchasing in the spring when I can get alot more use out of it. It's about 20 degrees in indiana at the moment and my desire to go on my first hunt ia trumped by my hatred of cold weather.

That is Fahrenheit right? (Brrrr, that is 12 degrees below freezing point B) ) Sorry, dumb Aussie here, we talk in Celsius .

 

I guess we Aussies don't know how lucky we are. In our Winter we get a bit of rain but here in Western Australia it will almost certainly never snow or go below freezing point.

 

The nancy boy that I am, consider any single digit above freezing point is cold. :)

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Very nice program, clyde. I plan on purchasing in the spring when I can get alot more use out of it. It's about 20 degrees in indiana at the moment and my desire to go on my first hunt ia trumped by my hatred of cold weather.

Winter time is the perfect time to get your GSAK filters and macros programmed so that when the weather is good you can have your GPS loaded and maps set up in a jiffy. You wouldn't want to wait until the weather is nice, cause that is geocaching weather, not sitting-at-the-computer-fiddling-with-software weather. Have fun.

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Yup, that in Fahrenheit. Getting down to 6 F at night. It's actually quite cold for this time of year. Most of the time it is coldest in January/Febuary here. It just feels cold, even inside at the same temperatures as always.

 

You're right, Hynr, but I'd really like to try caching before I invest too much. I'll probaly be hooked like most people, but I don't want to invest too much to start with. I'm thinking that I will get premium, gsak, etc. in March, since I'll have some extra money from my birthday. Still plenty of cold days then.

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I am still thinking, but you have just about convinced me.  B)  :)  :D

Add my "nudge" to the list as well. It would be my PLEASURE to kick in a little to a program that is already superb, but with a support team that ALSO LISTENS and QUICKLY RESPONDS to user concerns. B)B)

OK - just did the deed using Paypal. It really wasn't that hard!

 

Happy Holidays Clyde B)

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Subject: Totals Don't Match

 

Clyde,

I've got a strange problem that I just noticed. So far, I've found 118 caches and all 118 show up as found on GC.com and all 118 show up in GSAK. However, my yellow "found" total shows 120. If I double-click the 120 in the total box, it does the thing where it filters to show only those caches and it says "118 Shown (out of 572)". So GSAK knows that I've only found 118 caches, but why would my total show 120? I've tried rebuilding the database, purging ALL logs, and rebuilding the database again, but nothing has worked yet. I think my debug ticket number was 670, but I don't recall for sure. I'm also afraid I don't know when this first started, it could have been this way for quite a while and I just didn't notice until now.

 

M-T-P

 

04c6031c-63f5-442e-84f4-e888ac3e9299.jpg

 

EDIT: Nevermind. A while back I wanted to rewrite my log entry completely on a couple of caches so I completely deleted my old log and relogged a new find. GSAK showed two finds on both of these caches while GC.com only showed my newest one. I removed these two from GSAK and reloaded them from my PQs and all is well again.

Edited by M-T-P
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Enhancement Request

 

If it is possible, I would sure appreciate a spell checking capability in the Logs and User Notes parts of the GSAK database (as well as any other free-form text fields that I have yet to discover). I am a fat-fingered engineer who knows how to spell but can't type. I create logs in GSAK, load them into geocaching.com and then do a spell check to correct my typo's. Since I use IE, I also use IESpell (http://www.iespell.com/ ). Firefox folks could use SpellBound (http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/ ). Clyde, would it be possible to perhaps include one or the other of those (or some other) "under-the-hood" or called via API or something. It would sure help me, and probably many others too.

 

Thanks for considering this.

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Enhancement Request

 

If it is possible, I would sure appreciate a spell checking capability in the Logs and User Notes parts of the GSAK database (as well as any other free-form text fields that I have yet to discover). I am a fat-fingered engineer who knows how to spell but can't type. I create logs in GSAK, load them into geocaching.com and then do a spell check to correct my typo's. Since I use IE, I also use IESpell (http://www.iespell.com/ ). Firefox folks could use SpellBound (http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/ ). Clyde, would it be possible to perhaps include one or the other of those (or some other) "under-the-hood" or called via API or something. It would sure help me, and probably many others too.

 

Thanks for considering this.

OK, I will add it to "the list"

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Hi Clyde (and all others),

 

Please be informed that the new CacheMaps version can be used as an extension to GSAK for getting maps for caches stored in GSAK.

 

In short: you select the caches you want to find a map for and press the CacheMaps macro button. :P

This will export the selected caches as a loc-file, create html pages with with the cache information and open CacheMaps with this loc-file loaded. In CacheMaps you then have a huge amount of maps on a click. 18 Online maps are supported and 6 maps can be used as an offline AreaMap showing all caches that are on that map. Ofcourse you can zoom in and out on almost all maps.

 

The manuals on the site tell you how to create the needed GSAK macros.

 

If you like this feature, please feel free to include the macros and needed settings in you GSAK deliveries.

 

You can find CacheMaps here.

 

Enjoy caching with GSAK and CacheMaps! :D

 

BigBird

Edited by BigBirdNL
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I just noticed a minor "feature" in GSAK that might be worth working on sometime.

 

I created some new pocket queries and used the GSAK "get mail" button to download them. Only they hadn't made it to my mailbox yet, so there were no messages in the inbox.

 

After discovering that there were no messages, GSAK went through the whole indexing process anyway, even though no changes were made to the database.

 

Should GSAK skip the re-indexing if there were no files downloaded?

 

Jon

 

(this was with version 6.02 build 24; I didn't to see if this works differently in the 6.5 beta).

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The date filters don't work for me (never have). I am up to date (6.0.2 build=24).

 

Example:

 

Filter set to...

 

"Last found date on or after 01/12/2005" gives me the entire database, regardless of when the cache was found.

 

"Date found by me on or after 01/07/2005" gives me finds ranging from 20/03/2005 to the present.

 

"Date found by me on or before 31/12/2004" gives 0 finds by me (should be 88), and 3,272 caches I have not found.

 

"Last Update GPX on or before 01/12/2005" gives me two caches, one last GPX on 15/07/2004, the other 26/07/2004.

 

"Last update GPS on or after 01/12/2005" gives me caches with last GPX dates from 24/01/2005 to 08/12/2005.

 

I still love the program, and it is the heart of my geocaching desktop command centre, but these filters have never worked for me.

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I am still thinking, but you have just about convinced me.  :D  :D  :D

Add my "nudge" to the list as well. It would be my PLEASURE to kick in a little to a program that is already superb, but with a support team that ALSO LISTENS and QUICKLY RESPONDS to user concerns. :D:D

OK - just did the deed using Paypal. It really wasn't that hard!

 

Happy Holidays Clyde :P

Also did I. First time I use Paypal. Hope it works like they say it does.

 

Merry Xmas

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I just noticed a minor "feature" in GSAK that might be worth working on sometime.

 

I created some new pocket queries and used the GSAK "get mail" button to download them. Only they hadn't made it to my mailbox yet, so there were no messages in the inbox.

 

After discovering that there were no messages, GSAK went through the whole indexing process anyway, even though no changes were made to the database.

 

Should GSAK skip the re-indexing if there were no files downloaded?

 

Jon

 

(this was with version 6.02 build 24; I didn't to see if this works differently in the 6.5 beta).

I think it's probably because it's an old version.

 

That isn't happening to me with the new beta (and I can't really remember if it ever did.)

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The date filters don't work for me (never have). I am up to date (6.0.2 build=24).

 

Example:

 

Filter set to...

 

"Last found date on or after 01/12/2005" gives me the entire database, regardless of when the cache was found.

 

"Date found by me on or after 01/07/2005" gives me finds ranging from 20/03/2005 to the present.

 

"Date found by me on or before 31/12/2004" gives 0 finds by me (should be 88), and 3,272 caches I have not found.

 

"Last Update GPX on or before 01/12/2005" gives me two caches, one last GPX on 15/07/2004, the other 26/07/2004.

 

"Last update GPS on or after 01/12/2005" gives me caches with last GPX dates from 24/01/2005 to 08/12/2005.

 

I still love the program, and it is the heart of my geocaching desktop command centre, but these filters have never worked for me.

WOW, I have never heard of the date filters not working for anybody.

 

I suspect it is some issue to do with your settings and computer set up.

 

Could you please take the option "Tools=>Send debug info to Clyde" and email me the tracking number and also let me know what is your country set up is under regional settings (via control panel)

 

Edit: perhaps if you could also send me some screen shots so I can see exactly what you are entering for the dates

Edited by ClydeE
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If you are following this thread (or would just like to know how to do more efficient searching of the forums) I very much recommend you read this post

Very useful information that takes a while to figure out when you first start using forums. Too bad this kind of help isn't prominently listed in the Groundspeak forums themselves (e.g. on the search page).

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I could very well be missing the issue and I don't know how to search for it. Sorry if it's already been covered.

 

Is there a way to include a plain waypoint into GSAK with no gc.com (or any other) extended waypoint information AND it not affect the "found/didn't find" counts?

 

I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

 

Any help?

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Is there a way to include a plain waypoint into GSAK with no gc.com (or any other) extended waypoint information AND it not affect the "found/didn't find" counts?

 

I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

 

Any help?

In the upcoming GSAK V6.5 there is a way to scan the cache description for coordinates. They will be included with the same GC-code like the original cache followed with an increasing number. It's very useful if the cache has many stages. So it is no problem to alter this new waypoint code with an Pa for Parking, if the coords were included.

 

I almost help me with searching for a parking lot with maps and take this coords and transfer it to GSAK. So I mark the cache in GSAK for which I would like to add a parking and select in the menue 'waypoint - add' and press there the big button clone/copy this waypoint. I change the waypoint code with pa on the end and remove the cache descriptions. Also I change the coordinates.

Voila ready

 

After pressing the OK-button the new point is added to the database and also the unfound counter is updated (increased +1), but after I found the cache I remove this waypoint and everything is OK.

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I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

CR,

 

I don't know of a direct way to do this, although it would be a good option (to "exempt" a waypoint from the usual GSAK counts).

 

One workaround: Assuming you've used "gc.com login ID #" as your method for matching placed/found caches under "Tools>Options>General in GSAK, you can enter your own "owner ID" when you create or edit the parking waypoint. This moves it into "placed" status and it won't be counted under "not found". (You can find your "owner ID" by hovering your mouse over your name in a forum post, i.e. your's is 71436).

 

This works best if the database with your parking coordinates doesn't include any caches you own (i.e. create a separate database to use this workaround). "Owned" then becomes a proxy for "not a real cache" and you can use any of the GSAK filters or counts with this in mind.

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I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

CR,

 

I don't know of a direct way to do this, although it would be a good option (to "exempt" a waypoint from the usual GSAK counts).

 

This does bring up a good point.

 

Currently, all such waypoints get a cache type of "other" (Question mark with yellow background)

 

I am getting the feeling that the easy solution to this is to just exclude this cache type from all counts.

 

Can anyone see why this would be a bad idea?

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I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

CR,

 

I don't know of a direct way to do this, although it would be a good option (to "exempt" a waypoint from the usual GSAK counts).

 

This does bring up a good point.

 

Currently, all such waypoints get a cache type of "other" (Question mark with yellow background)

 

I am getting the feeling that the easy solution to this is to just exclude this cache type from all counts.

 

Can anyone see why this would be a bad idea?

Oooo! This would be cool!

 

Also, excluded from HTML exports and such, too, right?

 

I'm just looking for a way I can gather waypoints and not have to manually enter them in the GPS.

 

Thanks!

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I'm looking to add parking coords so they get uploaded to the GPS, but can't figure out to keep them from being included in the (un)found count.

CR,

 

I don't know of a direct way to do this, although it would be a good option (to "exempt" a waypoint from the usual GSAK counts).

 

This does bring up a good point.

 

Currently, all such waypoints get a cache type of "other" (Question mark with yellow background)

 

I am getting the feeling that the easy solution to this is to just exclude this cache type from all counts.

 

Can anyone see why this would be a bad idea?

 

Also, excluded from HTML exports and such, too, right?

 

No, you can already exclude these with a filter.

 

What I am referring to here is the counts at the bottom right of the screen only.

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Currently, all such waypoints get a cache type of "other" (Question mark with yellow background)

 

I am getting the feeling that the easy solution to this is to just exclude this cache type from all counts.

 

Can anyone see why this would be a bad idea?

The only problem I can see is if GSAK defaults to automatically assign the "Other" cache type to anything (e.g. a new cache type not yet defined in GSAK?).

 

If not, this sounds like a great idea for handling parking coordinates, intermediate stages of a multi, home coordinates, and anything else the user may wish to add to the DB for the purpose of sending to the GPSr or exporting to maps.

 

Edit: You might also change the "add a waypoint" cache type dropdown to default to "other" if this isn't too much work - that way user added waypoints default to "other" unless the user chooses something else!

Edited by Kai Team
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