+vcacher Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 Is there a way to search by difficulty or terrain? What's the easiest way for me to find all the 5-star-terrain caches in my area? Link to comment
+Marky Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 You can do this with a Pocket Query. --Marky ...Be nice to your fellow geocachers, they might be Hemlock... Link to comment
+vcacher Posted October 23, 2003 Author Share Posted October 23, 2003 Thanks for the tip. I would love to search for tough terrain caches on the Geocaching web site though. Here's what I would really like to see: When viewing a list of caches I've searched for (by just entering a zip code for example), have every field header be a clickable link that would re-sort the list by that field. Then I could sort that result list by d/t, last found, etc. Although difficulty and terrain would have to be separated into two different columns... actually why not have a view that reveals all fields in the database and be able to click any column header to sort however you like? Hey Jeremy, what do you think? Link to comment
+ClayJar Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 (Disclaimer: In order to get Pocket Queries, you'll need to be a paying member of Geocaching.com. You can send $3 to try it out for a month, or it's $30 per year, and if you don't think it's worth it, well, you will.) Okay, if you get Pocket Queries in GPX form (one of the options, and by far the most widely useful), you can use programs like Watcher to do all sorts of cool things. Watcher will, for example, let you sort and filter by a great plethora of things. For example, if you want to filter out anything with terrain less than three and a half stars, and also remove all micros, virtuals, locationless, and webcams from the list, and then sort it by distance from one of the caches (or anywhere else), and also only include caches south, southeast, or east of you, and hide the ones you've already found... Well, Watcher will let you do that. (That's just one example. There *are* a few things Watcher *doesn't* have yet, but brdad's keeping that list so I can tackle them as fast as I can get to them. ) Anyway, I should be around the geocaching chat tonight, and others are there as well, so if you'd like a little tour of what Watcher, gpsbabel, Spinner, gpxdoc, and all the rest of the stuff can do, I'm sure most of the regulars would be delighted to show off. I have a feeling that a few minutes with Watcher will be enough to make a couple bucks to support the site (and get PQs as a benefit) seem like you're stealing Jeremy's candy. (Just to give you an idea, the columns available in Watcher as of a couple versions ago include, but are not necessarily limited to: Cache Status, GCID, Waypoint Name, Travel Bugs*, Ignore List*, Found List*, Marked List*, Cache Type*, Cache Name, Placed By, Cache Owner, Cache Size, Difficulty, Terrain, Distance (and direction), State, Country, Coordinates*, Date Hidden, Last found, Last Not Found, Exported Date, and Log Icons*. [The columns with a * cannot be sorted, since no logical sort exists, but the rest of them can be sorted in any order/sub-order/whatever... You can sort by Terrain, sub-sort by Difficulty, sub-sub-sort by State, sub-sub-sub-sort by Owner, and sub^4-sort by Cache Name, if you follow.]) [[[ ClayJar Networks ]]] Home of Watcher downloads, Official Geocaching Chat, and the Geocache Rating System Link to comment
+vcacher Posted October 23, 2003 Author Share Posted October 23, 2003 I'm not looking for an offline query system. I'm asking about searching the geocaching.com web site without any extras. Am I missing something here? Link to comment
+ClayJar Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 quote:Originally posted by vcacher:I'm not looking for an offline query system. I'm asking about searching the geocaching.com web site without any extras. Am I missing something here? Yes. You're not going to get all the extras on Geocaching.com. Some of them just won't fit or won't fit well, and some of them are probably coming but won't be here for perhaps a long time. However, Geocaching.com has given us something that is exceedingly valuable to anyone wanting to do extra stuff, and that thing is the Pocket Query (GPX). If you want to have all the options and extras and capabilities and all, then by all means augment your browsing with Pocket Queries and programs. If you want just the basics, then here you are. Until you've tried Pocket Queries with Watcher et al, you might not see how useful they are, but they are indeed that useful. (You do one query to pull up to 500 caches, and then do all the searching and sorting and filtering and converting and mangling that you could almost ever want. It's like having Geocaching.com on steroids on your desktop, but if you don't want that, you can always just stick with "plain ole" Geocaching.com. ) [[[ ClayJar Networks ]]] Home of Watcher downloads, Official Geocaching Chat, and the Geocache Rating System Link to comment
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