What Day Is It?

Image by - luz - via Flickr

I'm not sure if other people are having similar issues with their Field Notes on the iPhone/iTouch geocaching application, but I recently noticed that the date and time stamps have been significantly off. I posted some Field Notes after finding some caches on different days this week, and when I finally got to a computer where I could compose my logs, I noticed that the day my Field Notes said I found the caches was different than the day I actually found the caches. It seemed that the Field Note date was a day earlier than the day I actually posted it.

I checked my iPodTouch to see if it was set to the wrong time zone, but it was not. So for whatever reason, the Field Notes feature is not recording the date and time from the device, but instead coming up with something different. So if you use Field Notes, just make sure you double check that the date is correct when you go to compose your logs.

Cache On!

Father's Day Is Caching Day

Like most Dads, I certainly relish the extra attention thrown my way every Father's Day. And while it's nice to get breakfast in bed and that TaylorMade hybrid golf club you always wanted, I typically request a family geocaching outing when asked what I want for Father's Day.

So, to inspire you to either take your kids caching, or your Dad, or both this Sunday, the following link will take you to a list of 119 different Father's Day themed caches. Hopefully you can find one or two near you.

Cache On, Pops!

Push Back Begins

Image via Wikipedia

A while ago, we mentioned the concern about potential GPS receiver signal interference from LightSquared  cellular transmission signals, should the FCC approve their proposal to provide service within a similar bandwidth. Turns out others besides the geocaching community are not only concerned, but have conducted tests showing some disturbing results. According to this article in GPS World Magazine, that included testing of John Deere high-precision GPS equipment, "the tests, which simulated various cellular base station transmission schemes proposed by LightSquared in L-band frequencies between 1525-1559 MHz, without exception demonstrated severe interference to Deere’s high-precision GPS receivers." Deere went on to advise the FCC that, "no potentially effective mitigation solution, alone or in combination, has been examined such that it can be deemed to protect other precision GPS users in the construction sector or GPS in other applications."


Whether or not LightSquared's proposed cellular service will result in similar interference problems with our beloved consumer grade GPS receivers is yet to be seen. But let's hope we never have to find out.


Cache On! And do it soon...

National Trails Day - 06/04/11

Image via Wikipedia

Need an excuse to get out and do some geocaching this weekend? No, I didn't think so. But by the off-chance that you need a little more enticement, here it is: The American Hiking Society has designated this Saturday, June 4th, as National Trails Day (NTD). They've even provided a map on their website of the all the scheduled NTD events around the country.

Most of the events that I've seen listed consist of organized trail maintenance activities; but what better way to give back to the trails that have given us so much? So get out there, repair a trail, and then hide/find a cache!

Cache On!

Further Improvents

There wasn't a lot of fanfare nor any web service shutdowns, but Groundspeak made some nice improvements to the geocaching.com website this week. A couple that I noticed, and really appreciate are:

• The addition of pocket queries to the Maps Beta page:

Now your pocket queries are accessible in the left side panel. If you click on one, the map zooms you to a view of all the caches in your query, and distinguishes them from other caches in the same area with a special icon. Click on the query again, and it disappears from view. Nice.

• Quicker access to more features from Your Profile drop down menu:

Previously, you had to navigate your way through the website to get to features such as your Pocket Queries, Field Notes, List of Finds, etc. Now, all of these pages are quickly available with one click from the, "Your Profile" drop down.

Enjoy the changes, and the extra caching time available on this long holiday weekend (even if the weather calls for more rain and a foot-and-a-half of snow in the Sierras).

Cache On!

Geocaching Bucket List

It was nice to wake up on this judgement day morning and find myself still here. And as far as I can tell, most people I know are still around, as is planet Earth. Although I understand that doom's day is supposed to begin in New Zealand and work it's way west, so theoretically, there's still a chance that the end is near.

All this rapture talk got me thinking about what caches I'd really like to find if I knew I only had a few hours left on the planet (assuming I'd even want to spend my last day on Earth caching - which I'm pretty sure I would). Given the limited time frame, I wouldn't, unfortunately, be able to complete those long-term challenge cache projects I've been working on; like, The 555 Club, the Fizzy Challenge, or the California County and DeLorme Challenges.

What I would do, however, to figure out the best caches within the shortest distance would be as follows:
(1) Fire up geocaching.com on my web browser;
(2) Go to "Hide and Seek a Cache" under the "Play" menu;
(3) Scroll down to and click on the link to "Advanced Search Options";
(4) Search for all caches, by postal code, and check the "Exclude your owned or found items from results" box:

(5) When the list pops up, click on the blue ribbon icon to sort the list by the highest ranked caches:

And now you have a quick and dirty bucket list to focus on before it all disappears.

Happy Armageddon, and Cache On!

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Jeremy Irish, president and CEO of Groundspeak, posted the following tweet yesterday:  

We did some map changes before the weekend, including the biggest request: smilies on by default.

That's right. If you haven't noticed yet, the Geocaching Maps Beta service now shows all of your finds on the map page without you having to tell it to do so, as before. And if that's enough, coming soon to the Geocaching Maps:

• Pocket Query integration
• Caches along a route
• Trackables support
• Real-time chat

It just gets better and better. If you'd like to follow Jeremy on Twitter, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/#!/locuslingua


Cache On!