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Congrats! Sounds like you had fun! Here’s to many more!
Entwives Tumor was my first find ever, and it took me two days to find. And I wasn’t even the one to find it either, as WIRacer found it before me.
One of these weekends when I’m up in Manitowoc, I’m going to give “You Can’t Be Serious” a go.
Steve, thanks for mentioning “Gee, I’m a Tree”. I’ve always wondered if it was too difficult, but I guess It’s nice to have a good stumper around for those who want to give it a go. Fortunately it’s mine, so I don’t have to worry about finding it…
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Originally posted by Buy_The_Tie:
I have the chance to get a Palm III or a Palm IIIc, each for the same price. Which would be best?
While the IIIc certainly would be nice, keep in mind that the display will chew up the batteries much faster than the III. If you have no use for color, I’d go with the III.
One thing I didn’t mention in my long-lost 27-cache frenze story is that I went (almost) paperless. The only paper I used was a Mapquest printout to get me down there and to find a Starbucks.
First, I created a Pocket Query for the nearest few hundred caches in the area I was headed. This went into ExpertGPS and then uploaded to my Etrex Legend so I had the coordinates for 500 caches at my disposal.
Next comes cache descriptions. I took the GPX file from the Pocket Query and used GPX Spinner on it to convert the file into HTML. The result is a folder full of cache description pages which I uploaded to my Sony Clie NX70V with Plucker. (And actually, if you have a Palm that can display 320×320 or better like the Clie, you can use the hires version of Plucker for a better looking display.
Armed with all this, I could go anywhere, use my GPSr to search for nearest caches, then look up the GCxxxx number in Plucker to get the description page. The only thing I was really lacking was a detailed map like you’d get from Mapquest, but the built-in map in the Legend worked well enough. In retrospect, I probably should have printed out at least one area map for where I was, just to help with finding parking for some of the county parks.
Oh, and the Starbucks? The first cache I visited was the Photographer’s Cache:Chicago Style. I needed to snap a picture of the stadium formerly known as Comiskey Park and be the first to upload it to the GC.com. Unfortunately, since I took the picture around 6 AM and wasn’t planning on getting home until after dark, I didn’t want to risk anyone getting a picture in before me. The Clie has a built in digital camera which takes pictures that are nothing to write home about, but are almost passable. I used the Clie to get my Sox Park pictures, then headed to Starbucks. Many Starbucks now feature WiFi access for people who want to pay for overpriced burnt coffee and surf the web at the same time. I took advantage of this, a wireless card for the Clie, and a free offer and logged onto GC.com and was able to not only log my find, but upload my picture as well!
Overall, I was very happy with the setup. I’m glad that it was a sunny day, so I was able to turn the backlight off on the Clie to conserve power. Otherwise a car charger may have been in order. If you’re going to the campout, I’m planning on bringing it all with if you like to see it in person. Just find me and ask!
Do people like these? I’ve been planning a multicache along the Root River Pathway in Racine which, while it can be done by driving from point to point, would be better done on a bike. I’ve just wondered how many people would bring a bike along with them to do a cache and how many would just drive?
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Originally posted by Geo-Johnson’s:
Database error: Invalid SQL: SELECT * FROM member WHERE (nick = ‘Geo-Johnson’s’)
MySQL Error: 1064 (You have an error in your SQL syntax near ‘s’)’ at line 1)
Session halted.
Looks like a missing addslashes() to escape out the “‘” in Johnson’s. MySQL thinks the ‘ before the s is the end of your nick, then doesn’t know what to do with the s’ afterwards.
I’ve become intimately familiar with this problem the past couple of days when someone named “O’Brien” logged into the web-based work scheduling system I’m writing at work. It was alternately erroring out or displaying his name as O\\\’Brien. Ick.
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Originally posted by Trudy & the beast:
Early on we had visions of picking up other cachers in the area, but when you consider the odds, it’s not likely.
Yeah, ‘cuz I never ever come upon other cachers when I’m out searching…
Actually, I’ve only come across other cachers four times before. One of those times I did have my radio with me, but that was just to talk to my wife who was staying back with my then-infant son. Another was the first cache I ever found. And then there was that time I drove up behind a pair of cachers who had arrived just ahead of me. Man, was that traumatic…
[This message has been edited by Cheesehead Dave (edited 03-12-2003).]
I seem to remember that garlic mustard pulling was all the rage last year, but we didn’t really find out enough about it until after the “pulling season” was over.
As long as we’re talking to the DNR, perhaps they can suggest an area where a few dozen geocachers pulling weeds while looking for caches could do some good.
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Originally posted by Trudy & the beast:
My first computer was a Sinclair 100 I picked up for $40. My first REAL PC was an XT with 64K of memory and a 40M hard drive.
I remember these days. And now the chips in some of my kids’ toys are probably more powerful than that, or my first computer, a TI-99/4A. I wonder whatever happened to that…?
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Originally posted by Trudy & the beast:
I remember that.. I used a bit bucket to carry the data…
Everyone here is staring at me wondering why I suddenly snorted coffee all over my monitor. Thanks a lot! 😛
I think I can answer the question about upstream vs. downstream speeds.
I general, with high-speed connections, unless you’re paying for a business account, you’re generally not allowed to use your computer as a server, and therefore, you really don’t need a fast upstream connection, especially since HTTP requests don’t need much bandwidth.
By throttling the upstream bandwidth, you’ll get more downstream bandwidth, which is where you want the most speed for downloading web pages, movies, *ahem* MP3s, etc.
I knew someone who had internet over satellite. A regular moden was used to send out requests, and the incoming data came in at high speed over the dish. The speed was just fine for that, so it’s really only the downstream speed that’s important.
I’ve got RoadRunner. It gives you eight email addresses for free, there’s a 1-800 number you can use for dialup for a limited number of minutes per month, and you get space for a website, though I don’t recall how much space you get.
I’ve been very happy with it. The only time I’ve really lost service is when the crew building the house behind me cut through the line.
I can’t get DSL where I am, because I live in a relatively new subdivision which is all fibre-optic, and, so I’m told, the DSL signal only travels over copper lines.
[This message has been edited by Cheesehead Dave (edited 02-05-2003).]
I’ve recently started using GPX Spinner to process the GPX searched I get from gc.com into HTML pages.
I then use Plucker to get them onto my Clie for viewing. You can search by distance, name, etc, and you also get to see things like the last few logs, as well as view hints.
Both excellent programs and both are free!
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Originally posted by WGA:
…emails will shortly be going out to last year’s winners so they can post their award…
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Originally posted by GrouseTales:
I couldn’t help but notice that out of all the COTM winners, none have posted the award graphic on the cache page. The only one I have seen posted is Team Rusch’s cache of the year for Three Card Poker.What gives?
Haven’t seen the above email yet. Should that have appeared already?
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Originally posted by sbukosky:
I’ve noticed a flaw in cache of the month in that some caches that have been around for a relatively long time get nominated. I doubt that we want to make this complicated, but it seems that nominees for cache of the month should have been place in or just prior to that month.With the growth of our numbers, many new cachers are finding older caches and to them, it is their cache of the month. See my point? I agree that COTY just needs to get off the ground.
The problem is, a fantastic new cache might pop up in the north woods in January. Being from Kenosha and with family, much as I would like to, I can’t just pop up there to seek it out. However, in June if I take the family up camping, then I’ll have the chance to find it, then yees, I’d nominate it for COTM, even though it’s been five months since it was first placed.
I would suggest that once a cache has won, it would be ineligible for future months, though. I suppose that this is where having some kind of award graphic on the page would be handy, to make new finders aware of the fact that a WGA COTM exists.
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