Treasure Tractors - PBS Geocaching Documentary

Here's a trailer for a PBS program on geocaching:

Treasure Tractors 

What do you think? Does it capture the essence of what geocaching is?

Lame Letterbox Hybrids

I had the week to myself so I filled everyday with letterboxing and geocaching. Found 13 letterboxes and everyone was fantastic. Oh wait….not everyone. How can that be? Because I found 2 letterbox hybrids.
Begin pet peeve rant…….

Why?! Why do cachers not understand the importance of the stamp? It’s the only thing that sets it apart from any other cache type. I’m so irked that I don’t pussyfoot around in my logs anymore.

The letterbox hybrid “Change a Letter“ - the CO asks that people play the game Change-a-Letter e.g. SNOW becomes SLOW becomes SLOP etc in their logs. The box is off a service road by an expressway, near a hydro tower, in the thick bushes and vines, under a few pieces of discarded lumber. Inside is a “Hello Kitty” plastic dollar store stamp. This was placed by a 30-something-year-old guy, not a child.

Here’s my comment:

Tuesday, 26 July 2011
A letterbox is all about the stamp. It’s the only thing that sets it apart from a traditional or a multi or a puzzle cache. The little child’s kitty stamp has no tie-in with the location or the cache’s word game theme.
For more information about letterboxing have a look at atlasquest.com. Ideally a letterbox should have a unique one-of-a-kind stamp in the box – a custom made stamp or a hand carved stamp. Something that defines the box and when collected shows that the finder found that particular box because the imprint is unique.

The stamp:

The Hello Kitty stamp - 2nd row, 3rd/4th from the left

The second box was a little better.
It at least had a commercial stamp that matched the theme of the box - a dice stamp for a box entitle "The Die is Cast" next to a Civic Center that the CO equated with a Roman Coliseum.

The box was in a weedy, garbage strewn area between the parking lot and a railroad track.

 This is more like what a letterbox stamp should look like:

Handcarved by Springchick

A custom made stamp

A collection of letterbox stamp images

A custom made stamp and letterbox for Ridgefield's 300th Anniversary

Munzee - geocaching with QR codes

I was reading CacheFreak's blog and found out about yet another geocaching database. This one uses the power of QR codes to record finds.

Munzee.com - 21st century Scavenger Hunt

Munzees come in any size or shape but all must contain a QR-code style barcode. The barcode combined with your GPS coordinates are the essential gameplay elements of munzee. Munzees can be hidden in containers, camoflauged or even in plain view.


Problems with Munzee:

• I'm not keen on the competitive aspect: Points are obtained by capturing other people's munzees or when your deployed munzees are captured by someone else. It's all about finding munzees for points and moving up levels.
• It's not available for Blackberry phones. 
• It's very phone centric. You need the munzee app and a gps app on your smartphone to play. 
• When you log your find you can't leave an online comment. Not particularly rewarding if you own a munzee "cache".  
• No munzees near me, I'd have to cross the border and drive another 100 miles.

  Check out CacheFreak's review of Munzee

Letterbox Hybrids - It's All About the Stamp

My pet peeve is the stamp in most letterbox hybrids. It's usually any stamp the cache owner can find in the toybox. It usually has no connection to the box or location. It's almost always a commercial stamp - very rarely a piece of personal

art i.e. a handcarved eraser or other carving medium (pzkut, safety-kut, speedy-cut, mars carve, etc.). Whenever I see the words "I threw a stamp in the box for the letterboxers" I know I'm going to be disappointed. In fact I'm a little insulted. I like to collect letterbox stamp images (I prefer them to trinkets) but not just any non-relevant, non-personalized image. When I look at the stamp image in my personal logbook I want to relate it to the box and the location and the planter. Even if it has to be a commercial stamp if the location is by a covered bridge I'd like to see a commercial stamp of a covered bridge, not Winnie the Pooh.

When I go to a letterbox in Fox Park whose title is "This Letterbox Will Out Fox You" I don't expect to find a cupcake stamp in it:

Instead I want to see a handcarved fox stamp:



Why bother planting a letterbox if you aren't going to get creative? Just hide a regular cache.

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter July 13 2011 - Quality Geocaches

This week's important public message from Groundspeak

July 13 2011

Quality Geocaches

In 11 years, geocaching has grown from a single container in the woods of Oregon to an international activity with over 5 million participants and more than 1.4 million geocaches. In the last week alone, Groundspeak Volunteer Reviewers approved nearly 6000 caches. Wow. Thanks, Reviewers!

This rapid growth means that almost anywhere in the world, you can walk out your door and find a geocache within an hour. But it also means that geocache saturation is increasing. In some areas, it is becoming difficult to find a location to place a cache.

As the number of geocachers and geocaches grows, we encourage you to make sure that each and every cache you place is of good quality. We know that everyone has a different opinion as to what makes a "quality hide," but there are some steps that you can take to make sure that others will enjoy your cache:

• Find many caches before hiding one of your own. This will show you how vastly different geocaches can be. We suggest finding at least 20-25.
• Think about your favorite geocaches and why you enjoyed them so much. Was it the location? The container? The story on the cache page? Try to replicate the elements that you enjoyed while adding some of your own creativity.
• Make sure that the geocache container is waterproof and will survive the elements. It is better to use a sealed container rather than a plastic bag.
• Maintain your geocache. This means replacing the logbook when it is full, checking on the cache every so often to see that it's still doing well and responding quickly to "needs maintenance" logs.

You can see which geocaches others recommend by looking at the number of Favorite Points that each cache has received. Favorite Points can be found on each cache page and in the search results list. Premium Members can award 1 Favorite Point for each 10 caches that they find and can sort the search results list by most-favorited caches.

Got a brand new GPSMAP 62s! Now I'm nervous.

It arrived today. I am so excited about this new toy. BUT......I'm so nervous.

First, is everything going to be in the FedEx bag?

I left it sitting on the table for a half hour then finally opened it. Checked each of the items - correct GPS model...check, 4GB micro card...check, Garmin vehicle mount kit...check, Garmin City Navigator North America NT maps micro sd card (full coverage)....check. Phew. OK, that hurdle crossed.

 

Next, open up the Garmin box*. OK, all contents there and accounted for. It comes with a carabiner clip. This looks like something I'm going to always use. I'll be able to safely clip the unit to my backpack strap or my belt loop. I carried the old 60Cx in the water bottle pocket of my backpack when I wasn't walking with it in my hand and I was constantly reaching back to be sure it was still there.

Insert 2 AA batteries. Hmm, they sit funny. The + terminal ends are raised up at an angle from the - terminal ends. The cover won't fit back on. Consult the manual. Nothing about batteries sitting at an angle. So I'm guessing that they need to be pushed in further. Yep....they need to snap in. Battery cover goes back on properly. Phew.

Next, turn on gps. It works. Good. Basemap loading - as usual, they are quite useless, only very major roads. Nice colour screen. Lots of pages. Lots of options. Very easy to move between pages. Satellites acquired faster then my 60Cx.

Now to load the City Navigator maps. This is the part that scares me the most. I'm not good at figuring out why software doesn't work, so hopefully, fingers crossed this goes smoothly. Check the Quick Start Manual for guidance in installing the SD card. Nothing there. No other manual. There's a yellow card in the package - there's a short 3 point instruction blurb about getting the manual from the device.

Connected the usb to the gps and then to the laptop. Hmmm. Couldn't read the device. Unplug usb, put it back in. It connected properly this time. Little yellow card says to click on the Documents folder. Easy peasy. The manual comes up. I save it to a folder on my laptop.

Next take the micro SD card out of the adapter. Manage to do it without destroying the card or sending it flying across the room. Pull the tight batteries out of the compartment and flip the little metal SD bracket up. Examine the tiny card. Examine how it should fit into the gps. Match up the notches. Lower the bracket. It won't stay shut. Then I remember that I need to slide the bracket down until it snaps in. Turn gps on. Nice quick boot up. Nice new detailed maps. :) All's working so far. Set it to find a nearby city. Worked properly. Zoom works fine. So far pretty good.

Now to download a GPX file. Consult the manual. Hmmm. That's not covered in the manual. With my old 60Cx I opened the GPX file with Easy GPS then sent it to my Garmin. I'll try that... Opened up the GPS file with EasyGPS, set up EasyGPS for a 62s device, then sent the waypoints to the gps. It worked.

Turn on the unit. Find a nearby geocache. View the description, then the logs, then the hint. I'm absolutely loving the Geocache paperless display. Only thing missing is the Favorite votes, but that's geocaching.com issue.

OK, I think I'm done for now. All went reasonably well. Everything there. Everything working. Nothing broken. Nothing too confusing. I'm a happy cacher. :)


* found this youtube video by Rob2222de unboxing a 62s.