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quote:
Originally posted by Caesaria:
Is there a web designer in the group that can create a map similar to what the reserveamerica.com use to have for state parks?
Since this topic started, I’ve been working on a system for automatically extracting information from geocaching.com and determining what county a cache is located in. I’ve can grab all the pertinent information for the caches (name, coords, creator, etc.) and have a county boundaries map data set… now I just have to come up with code to do the calculations.
In the future, we could plot the caches on county maps. We could also automatically determine how many counties people have finds in.
Right now, the best way to determine what caches are in which counties is to use the maps on geocaching.com. They aren’t as nice as the Buxley maps, but the county lines are visible when zoomed out. Click here for a Wisconsin map with all the county names.
quote:
Originally posted by GrouseTales:
Also, are any of you using AvantGo channels on their PDA for geocaching. I made a custom channel for the Wisconsin Geocache search. I can get full details on the first few caches, but caches down the page show not available for viewing. Any ideas how to fix this?
There is a setting for the channel that gives the maximum size (how much data will be grabbed) before stopping. You probably need to increase this value to get more cache pages.
Also from the AvantGo Mobile Internet FAQ: “Mobile Internet limits the amount of data that can be transferred in a single sync to 2MB and the amount that a user can sync in a day to 20MB. These limits are in place to ensure that every user is able to sync quickly.”
Note that creating and using a custom channel like this can be a real bandwidth drain. Each time you sync up, you will essentially be ‘visiting’ each Wisconsin cache page, if even nothing has changed and you don’t plan on using the data. If everyone did this, geocaching.com would grind to a halt.
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Originally posted by sbukosky:
I see that popular opinion won and the cache is approved. They had to get one last dig in and say that they hope there isn’t a bunch of copy cat caches springing up. Well let’s see, how many counties in Wisconsin…?
72 counties in Wisconsin Steve, a lot more than the 29 in Utah. Haven’t actually looked, but I bet there are at least a half dozen or so counties in Wisconsin that still have no geocache. So step one of creating your “Worked All Counties-WI” cache would be place caches in these ‘dead’ counties .
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Originally posted by sbukosky:
Now, how to I apply a state sticker to my motorcycle that doesn’t even have a windshield???
When I got my stickers, I asked a park ranger this same question. (I do have a windshield, but it is detachable and I have it off most of the time.)
The official word: The sticker must be applied to something that is a permanent part of the motorcycle… hard bags, side covers, wrapped around the fork tubes, etc. It should be on the left side so it can easily be seen at the entrance stations.
I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the paint on my motorcycle, so I ended up just sticking it to my windshield. (I now have to make sure the windshield is on before going to any state park though…)
If you come up with a clever way or place to put these on motorcycle without a windshield, please share it!
I’ve got a couple new “cheese” type foam can coolers I can bring along to the campout for the cache Ken. I’ll try to dig up some other Wisconsin items (Harley-Davidson stuff?) as well.
Is this cache only going to be out during the event, or is it something they intend on leaving out permanently?
Congrats John… glad you enjoyed finding my caches.
I looked back and my one year anniversary was March 4. I actually didn’t find the first cache I went looking for (Michi gami) because it had been stolen/vandalized. I tried a different cache later in the day (Pookie’s Stash) and scored my first find.
This looks like it will be interesting. One question though… what if all 17 players find all 5 “card caches”. By my math, that’s 5*17=85. (I figured the 17 player limit was because giving each player 3 cards would almost use up the deck (51 cards).)
If all the virtual cards in the virtual deck are gone, are you just out of luck? Or will you cycle through the virtual deck again?
In any case, this looks like a fun extension to geocaching… a lot like a motorcycle poker run, where you get one card at each stop, best hand wins.
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Originally posted by Thraxman:
I’ll let you guys all vote on this one.I am at a total loss.
Gotta agree with Ken on this one… toss ’em. Probably someone who was more concerned with trading items than the “true spirit of geocaching”. Better to leave nothing than to leave some questionable item.
Ken, didn’t you have somebody put some condoms in one of your caches (New Prospect)? The worst thing I have found in one of my caches was a candy bar, which I promptly took out. (It was in an ammo box, so I doubt animals could break in to get the food out, but I decided to play it safe.)
Interesting question… probably because a lot of people visit our site (because of the grandfathered pop-ups and the banner ads on the cache pages) and the webring stuff is right on our main page? Note that we have received 2,529 hits in March from people visiting from cache pages.
It is also interesting that we received very few hits from the webring. The webring site says we only received 16 vistors from the webring in the past 8 weeks, but I think their accounting is wrong…
Looking at the statistics from March (see the Total Referrers table), it looks like we have received 42 hits from webring. (Referrer URL http://a.webring.com/go.) We actually got more hits, 77, from the link on Ken’s http://www.rocketink.com/geocachi.htm page.
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Originally posted by Team Cachebarr:
Looks like I will be getting a PC cable and figuring out how to use the EasyGPS.
If you will be purchasing a data cable for a Garmin unit, check out the Pfranc site. They have e-Trex data cables for $15, Garmin list price is $38 (ouch!).
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Originally posted by GrouseTales:
I would also like to know how to save cache pages on my laptop.I’ve tried saving the whole page, but then it saves each item on the screen in a folder, and doesnt connect them all into the web page format.
Does anyone have any ideas how to do this?
Brian, I’ve had good luck saving complete web pages using Internet Explorer “Web Archive” files.
Go to the page you want, then in the “File” menu choose “Save As”. In the “Save as type” combo box, choose “Web Archive, single file (*.mht)”.
The page will be saved as a single file which contains all graphics, logos, etc. The file produced is actually a multipart MIME text file, so it is somewhat portable (meaning it may open in applications other than Internet Explorer).
I believe this file format was added in Internet Explorer 5, but since I’m running version 6 on all my machines I couldn’t tell you for sure…
quote:
Originally posted by kbraband:
On the other hand, geoDashing seems like an unfortunate waste of resources to pursue random coordinates. Please don’t take this personally, Jeremy and Joe. I know both of you have done a lot to further the cause of geoCaching in Wisconsin. I’m just expressing a heartfelt opinion about geoDashing.
You bring up some good points Ken. Joe… I’m quitting the team. (Just kidding! )
I was planning on combining geodashing with geocaching… when I was hunting a cache in an area with a dash point, I would just swing over and check out the dash point. Plus I do enough traveling in Wisconsin to come close to a number of dash points for other reasons. If I have to go more than 20 miles out of my way to pick up a dash point, I probably won’t do it. I could see how you could label a ‘serious’ dasher who was driving hundreds of miles just to visit a random point as a natural resource waster though…
I plan to do most of my geodashing/caching via motorcycle this summer with should reduce my environmental impact. My cycle gets 45 to 55 MPG (depending on how fast I go ), can outrun just about anything on the road, and was 1/3rd the cost of my car. (I do have to worry about getting ‘grilled’ by SUVs and the other tanks on the road though.)
Remember that more energy is consumed building a typical car than is ever consumed by driving it. So having two cars and not driving them is in some ways worse than having one and driving it a lot.
Maybe our team name should be the ‘Eco-Terrorists’ or the ‘Fossil Fuel Killers’?
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Originally posted by Thraxman:
Ok Jeremy, If I understand correctly, you would pretty much be covering up and down the west coast of lake michigan, with possible excursions farther inland in central and north-central WI. I live in Janesville, and figure I can normally be active in a 40 to 80 mile radius.
Sounds about right. I don’t know what my radius would be… say 80 miles around Milwaukee and 80 miles around Stevens Point, WI. Wouldn’t mind traveling down to IL early in the month to grab a dash point or 2 before Markwell gets to them as well.
You’re right about two people on the same team claiming the same dash point. So even if we picked up another person from the Milwaukee area for the team it wouldn’t be all bad…
As for a team name, I really don’t know. Dash-Cows wouldn’t be the worst name if our team consisted of mostly (or all) people from Wisconsin. ‘The Rabid Badgers’ would also work. (Should strike fear into the hearts of our competitors.) I also wouldn’t mind ‘The Untouchables’. I’ll let you decide what you want for a name… it doesn’t really matter to me.
Joe… do you plan on looking for dash points this month or waiting until the next game starts up in the beginning of April? If you plan to wait, we could hold off on forming the team for a week or so.
Anyone else willing to join the team, or are you guys chicken ?
quote:
Originally posted by Thraxman:
Well, last nite when I was checking the site out, I looked at the scores for the current month’s game, and only two teams really had impressive scores… and no team really had a score that a team of 5 scattered around wisconsin, or wisconsin and another state or two, could compete with
You’re right… I took a look at the scores and most of them are pretty low. (Plus we are doing this for fun anyway so who cares if we win.)
I did notice that Markwell from IL and someone else from IL are playing… so there would probably be clashes for dash points along the Wisconsin-Illinois border. I also noticed that there are no dash points on large lakes like Lake Michigan and Lake Superior… apparently these are screened out because they would be too easy to get to.
If you want to form a team Joe, I’m in. I would be able to cover the area from Milwaukee north to Green Bay and south to Chicago, plus I could also hit points in central and northcentral Wisconsin since I’m up there quite a bit. It would be nice if we could get someone from the northwestern part of state (say around Eau Claire) and maybe someone from far SW Wisconsin or Iowa.
Anyone else interested?
Looks like fun! Anyone interested in forming a team?
I’ve been to this site before and thought about joining one of the existing teams. We could form our own team but it probably wouldn’t be competitive… to have a good geodashing team you have to recruit people from all over the world, not just WI. (They pick about 30,000 random points all over the world for each game.)
What would be cool is we put together a version of geodashing that only covered Wisconsin (or the Midwest). We could pick random points and have teams that scored points by visiting these points. (It wouldn’t be hard to get the wi-geocaching.com site set up to handle this if there was interest. In fact, we could do a much better job tracking who reached each of the dash points.)
The only thing I don’t like about the geodashing concept is that because of the random nature of the dash points, most end up in areas where they can’t be visited (private property, etc.). It would be nice to have a points system that rewarded people for trying to visit a dash point even if they couldn’t get to it.
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