[Jeremy]

@ExecLink wrote:

Has anyone checked to see if campfires are allowed? Some areas of WI had a ban on open fires a few weeks back I believe.

There is currently no ban. The fire danger has gone down from the Extreme level to High… and it will probably drop further because the area is getting rain right now and likely tomorrow and maybe Wednesday.

WDNR Fire Danger Map

[Jeremy]

@GrouseTales wrote:

Anyone get any ticks???

I sprayed down with Permanone and didn’t see any ticks. I did have a skeeter land on me while out hiding a cache.

I had three wood ticks. Two I detected while I was hiking, the other one rode back to Milwaukee with me (it was inside my sweatshirt that I took off before I left the park).

I also had a couple skeeters bother me, but I’m guessing they will be a lot worse if the weather is warm the next two weeks…

[Jeremy]

How about:

Poisonous mushrooms
Hiking/walking stick
Plastic grocery or garbage bag (should always have one along for CITO opportunities :))
Machete (for those who like to bushwhack)

[Jeremy]

What are your computers smoking guys? I have no trouble viewing the banner images on cache pages or on the WGA site.

On second thought, maybe the images are being blocked as porn by the Net Nanny program your parents have installed? Because the WGA logo is dead sexy! 8)

Seriously, anyone else having this problem? Nothing has changed recently from a WGA server standpoint… but maybe there is something I can do to make whatever filtering/proxy/firewall issue that is going on here go away.

[Jeremy]

I’ve attached are the documents (policy document and cache placement form) that Donna sent to me. We’ll get information on the Milwaukee County geocaching policy and permanent links to these documents added to our “Hiding A Cache” page shortly.

Note that the policy document has “draft” in the title, so maybe things aren’t set in stone yet? You think they would have contacted someone at the WGA if something official was put in place…

[Jeremy]

@djwini wrote:

is there a place i could post these documents?

Donna, are these documents in some kind of electronic format (PDF, MS Word document, etc.)?

If so, please email (web wi-geocaching.com)/PM them to me or get them sent to a Board member so we can get them posted on the site ASAP.

Otherwise, we’d have to come up with a way to get the documents you have scanned, or will need to ask the county for electronic versions…

[Jeremy]

“Ask, and ye shall receive.” As my website posse and PCFrog already know, you now have the ability to hide selected forums on the WGA site.

The feature itself is pretty easy to use… from the main forum page (forum index), click on the name of the forum you wish to hide. On the page for the forum, you’ll see a link in the upper right labeled “Hide this forum”. Click it, confirm the action, and then the forum should be hidden. Once hidden, the forum no longer appears in the main forum list and its posts don’t appear in the “posts since last visit” list.

All hidden forums can be accessed via a “backdoor” mechanism at the bottom of the main forum page (forum index)… select the name of the hidden forum from the dropdown list to view it. Once you go to the page for a hidden forum using this backdoor, you should see an “Unhide this forum” link that you can use to make the forum visible again.

Thanks to the website committee for the beta test bug reports and feedback on this feature.

[Jeremy]

@Lostby7 wrote:

I’m guessing an “Ignore Thread” button is not an option?

Anything is possible… though this would definitely be more involved than hiding a forum, so maybe this is a “phase 2” feature.

If a topic was ignored, what would that mean… that it would not appear at all in the list of topics for a forum, or that it would be visible but somehow would not impact the new posts indication/list? How would you propose allowing people to undo the ignore topic operation, especially if you couldn’t see the topic anymore?

[Jeremy]

@bnb wrote:

I would use this because I regularly use the “view all posts since last visit” and it would be nice to not have certain ones pop up. But, I would like a way to see those forums when I wanted to to – like to directly click through the front page of the forums to get to them.

If a forum were hidden, its new posts would definitely not show up in the “all posts since last visit”.

If I add the “backdoor”, all the hidden forums would appear at the bottom of the front page (forum index) of the forums, probably in a drop down list to save space. This would allow you to enter any forums you had hidden to see what was going on (or to unhide the forum). But it sounds like you still want them to appear in the forum index where they normally go Ruth? This may be another level of “hiding”…

[Jeremy]

Great suggestion Russ. We kind of figured that something like this would be needed as soon as the regional forums were introduced… so it has been on my to-do list since then.

The plan was to release this feature with several other forum changes as part of a single “Forum Enhancement Package”. But given all the activity in the Off Topic forum as of late, we probably want to introduce it ASAP. 🙂

Question for Russ and others that intend to use this feature: Would it be OK to completely hide the specified forums (so you could even not read any posts in it if it were hidden), or would you want/need some backdoor method to access your hidden forums?

[Jeremy]

Here’s another shirt related idea I’d like the campout committee to consider. I posted something about this in one of the private forums but got no feedback… so I have no idea how stupid this sounds. 🙂

Since all the hooded sweatshirts sold this year will have a pocket, I propose we have something creative printed on the pockets. My best effort at something creative so far is:

Official WGA Pocket *Cache*

Where “Cache” is in strikethrough, so it would look like:

I’m not sure how much this extra printing will cost, but if it is just one color it shouldn’t be too bad. We’d pick the text style and color to match the chosen shirt design.

And if the campout committee prints the pockets, they may want to consider stuffing a small log sheet and pencil in each one. And instead of hiding temporary caches, everyone who buys a hoodie can just be told to put on the shirt, hide out in the woods, and radio in their coordinates… 😀

[Jeremy]

@The5Xplorers wrote:

Is the committee going to work through the night to pick the winner?

No they are not. 🙂

OK, here is my submission. I know it is late… but I couldn’t sleep and after looking at all the submitted t-shirt designs I decided to try to create my own.

CONCEPT: A fake movie poster. It is advertising the “sequel” (Part 2) of our first campout at Hartman Creek in 2004.

ISSUES: Image used is kind of rough (i.e. creek should be smoother, trees more realistic, etc.). WGA and Wisconsin Geocaching Association appears all over the place… maybe too much? The text at the bottom can be easily adjusted to fit the needs of the campout committee. WGA logo would have to be redone to allow it to be rendered in the colors being used.

COLORS: Not sure which color scheme looks best. 5 colors used (black, yellow, blue, green, red).

Version 1: Standard Colors

PDF Version

Version 2: Day/Night or Warhol Colors

PDF Version

[Jeremy]

[Jeremy]

@EnergySaver wrote:

That last bit is sort of ironic coming from me, as our main GPSr is still a good ol’ Garmin eMap … which seems to just about match the unit in the logo (ok if you squint).

Funny story on that. There was actually a debate about what the GPS in the logo should look like… from what I remember, some questioned whether the GPS should have the buttons below the screen, as many of that day (GPS 12, Lowrance units, etc.) had the buttons above the screen. Others thought we should have used an eTrex like outline and maybe made the GPS yellow. I may have this discussion archived somewhere and if so I’ll post it.

While it is supposed to be a generic or abstract graphical representation of a GPS, it was heavily influenced by the eMap (which I was using at the time) and the Magellan 315/330 series which was new at the time.

Back to something serious… I think updating the GPS to look more like a modern unit and adding detail to it would not be the best idea. If we did that, we’d probably be back in the same boat in 4 or 5 years… with a GPS in the logo that looked like an old dinosaur unit that no one uses anymore. 🙂

[Jeremy]

@Team Deejay wrote:

On a related note, how difficult would it be to set up a searchable database of parks department resources and approval requirements, organized by Parks department, county and park? Obviously we would need to collect the data, but I am asking more about the technical side for making the data available to the membership?

Technically possible… but it may be not needed yet, as the number of places in Wisconsin that require notification are small and I think we have them all spelled out on the Hiding A Cache page. Of course, if more agencies require notification, it may get too unwieldy to list them all on a page…

There is also already a national site with a geocaching policy information database… nothing listed for Wisconsin, but Iowa has been very active in adding the policies for their state:

http://geocachingpolicy.org

Definitely not the cleanest user interface in the world, and it isn’t easy to figure out how to search for or add policies. Again, this is probably a service that geocaching.com should be providing, but is not.

Here is a map the Iowa folks have on their site… the map links to county policies (if known):

http://www.iowageocachers.org/county_info.php

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