The last several weeks we've been getting into the new Munzee game, especially placing game pieces. These game pieces use QR codes to register a find rather than a physical log book. As such they can be placed in the open, in plain view if you like, and scanned without the player touching the game piece (I even have one behind glass at my office). But those game pieces placed in the open must withstand the elements. We've been playing with a few variations on the materials used to produce the game pieces and have had some mixed success.
My first placement (Troy's First Munzee) was expected to be most reliable -- a thermal laminated sheet printed from a color laser printer. The problem with that method was in attaching it to a surface (without risking damage). After placing a few we've found our favorite to be a flat magnet with the game piece attached to the front. The problem in that method has been two fold -- finding a printable surface which will withstand the weather, and an adhesive which will hold through the exposure. As a Geocacher we have used the Rite in the Rain copier paper for our logs with success so started there. We felt that might not last as well as we'd hoped once the first few were placed so we switched to National Geographic Adventure Paper (we played with it some on caching runs but that product doesn't allow pen or pencil marks easily) as it's a plastics-based product. That seems to be working better but we still haven't had them out long enough to really know. What we really need is full scale testing of multiple materials to tell us the best method.
Since that's not likely to happen on a large enough scale to be definitive, I've decided to enlist the help from a few Google+ contacts to print and test several options myself. I'll be testing prints from six different printers (two different HP inkjet types, an Epson UltraChrome inkjet, two different color lasers, and a monochrome laser) on several stocks:
It's been more than a year since the last time we streamed live recordings of the Cache-A-Maniacs via our Ustream channel. It does take some time to set-up and run the streams and we weren't getting many viewers. There seems to me more people interested again in watching live video from podcast recordings so we're considering running the experiment again. We've done some of the prep for steaming again for the GeoWoodstock IX Podcast Studio (which sadly did not work out). The question is whether you would be interested in checking out those live recordings of the Cache-A-Maniacs interviews? Please drop us a comment or tweet me if you would like to watch these live streams.
Tonight at 7:30PM Eastern (12:30AM March 9th GMT), I'll be on Geocraze discussing the Geocaching 12 of 12. The Geocaching 12 of 12 is only scheduled twice each year to give Geocachers to chance to share their Geocaching day with the rest of the world through a dozen images. The first for 2011 hits just four days from now -- Saturday, March 12th. Join us live tonight on TalkShoe or download the episode later for more on the fun merging between geocaching and photography. (I'd prefer you join us live.) But don't forget to pull out your camera on Saturday for the first Geocaching 12 of 12 this year!
The first milestone was hit by TeamLegend4 on only the second cache of the outing. That 6,000th find was at the traditional cache "'Sillybillies'" (GC1580D) by Track -- a nice location this time of the year with the trees and view of the lake.
We made our 3,800th find next on a multi-cache which threw us for a little bit of a loop. Tail Mix 8 tossed in a red herring on "Milford Trail - No Trolling" (GC2F6HR) which we fell for before opening the container. We grabbed our photo near there however since it made a better location for the shot than did the final. It was a nicely done cache though which we will be remembering for some time.
Shortly after that searchgeek78 made his 150th find on another cool cache. "Milford Trail - A Little Monkey Business" (GC2ER8X) by 5*Terrain required a little climbing to be had. Another fun cache for the experience we'll not soon loose in our minds.
Last milestone on the trip, and nearing the last cache, and Geoaddict's 1,000th find. This was four years in the making and the only ammo can on the trail. He had a great location at "I Scream for Ice Cream (and Biking!)" (GC1RMQ4) by MorseCode762 (though I don't recommend taking the bike off the trail for anyone attempting it after reading this) for that find and photo.
One of the things that saved me during this trip was the WiFi aboard our flights to and from Seattle. I spent most of the time each way doing the basic editing of the recorded interviews and I stayed online as long as they'd allow. Sadly that meant doing some work for the office from the air, but mostly it was just keeping up on e-mails and checking-in with some of the people we needed to meet in Seattle. On the way home I used it to prep some of these blog posts. Most important though, I was able to send back the completed zip files of the interviews and store all that vital information in the cloud. Should something have happened to my little 13" travel laptop it meant I'd still have the roughly fourteen hours of work. Now if the airlines could only do something (like United has with their economy plus seating) to allow us to actually use a 13" laptop in flight we'd be all set!
The last of the Geocaching Traid we needed to complete in the Pacific Northwest was the Original Stash Plaque. This was the longest drive of the three since it's outside Portland Oregon rather than in the Seattle Washington area, but it was still less than an eight hour drive from our hotel on the opposite side of Seattle. This destination is actually a combination of a plaque at the location where Dave Ulmer hid the first geocache on May 3, 2000, and two traditional caches -- "Un-Original Stash" and "ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE ©" -- less than a hundred feet from the plaque. The location isn't much more than a roadside pull-off on an Oregon hill, but we had expected a line of cachers. We had two honk and wave as we were there, and one pulled out as we were pulling in, but that was about it. The caches were average caches and the plaque an interesting location to drop a traveler or GPS for a quick photo. Of course we had to drop a Cache-A-Maniacs coin on the side for a couple photos. I'm happy to have been there and found the plaque, but I was anxious to get on to find some more caches. What's next?
Groundspeak's "Lost & Found Celebration" was a huge event with a street fair feel, but there was one activity that took most of our time. We (TeamLegend4, Drie, and I) spent most of the event hunting the challenge caches placed by Geoteaming just for the event.
Each of the cache was themed as a year in Geocaching (2000-2009/10) using a notable event in Geocaching from that year. Each cache contained some props and a QR code for smartphone users to pull up information about the theme of that cache. It was all very well assembled, but really the creativity of the caches are what impressed me the most. Granted some of thes containers wouldn't stand up well for very long, but they don't need to for an event like this
(some of the favorites are included here). The hunt took us around the area, mostly on foot, for an exhaustive and time consuming tour. When we returned to the Geoteaming tent about 15 minutes prior to the end of the Celebration we were told there had been only about eight teams to finish all ten. I'm not at all surprised with the distances between hides. Too bad we didn't get a smiley for each one, but what a great time we had and it brought back memories from the five short years I've been caching with reminders of how much has changed. My thanks to the Geoteaming and Groundspeak crews for a job well done. Perhaps there are some ideas for other cachers in their future events?
This was our second Geowoodstock and Drie had joked we should try to make it a milestone, number 3,600 even if we couldn't make it to 4,000 in time. Of course I wasn't too keen to curb our caching to make it a milestone, nor do I think too much of the 100s any more. So we went about our life and caching as usual but by a happy coincidence we ended up at 3,599 when we turned in for the day on July second. All we'd have to do is not go caching before Geowoodstock VIII and we'd make that our 3,600th find. So with great pains we passed several caches along the way (I kept the caches hidden for my protection). I'm not sure it was worth missing those few caches, but Geowoodstock was well worth the milestone.
Mission 9 (the last remaining APE cache in the northern hemisphere) has been maintained as of late by the well known cacher Moun10Bike (recently hired as a Groundspeak Lakey). With thousands of Geocachers decending on the area for Geowoodstock VIII and the Lost & Found Celebration that cache would certainly be seeing most of them hitting this iconic cache. With the closure of the tunnel and limited parking available, it was expected to be a big mess. So the Washington State Geocaching Association (WSGA) created an event at a nearby, larger parking lot to facilitate the crowds.
The intelligence of this arrangement seemed obvious enough when I'd first heard the plan. (It was really driven home when reports started flying on Twitter about Geocachers who had completed the APE cache in the days before having their car windows smashed and most or all of their valuables stolen.) The WSGA made sure the buses (four school buses) were constantly in motion giving people easy access to the trailhead from the event and back. They set-up a tent at the trailhead for everyone to check out on their return, purchase the special edition coins, and of course to get any help. Along the winding trail up, which could easily have been lost in either direction, they tied orange ribbons to guide us to the old railbed turned trail. At that intersection they had placed a sign guiding visitors to the APE cache (of course we and most of the other cachers needed to grab photos of that sign) along with a couple of cachers in APE costumes at the cache itself. Despite the icky Seattle rain and cooler temperatures, enough cachers turned out to justify mega-event status for this one and things still seems to flow pretty well. With that many cachers on the trail there were some points of congestion, specifically around the caches along that trail. It's certainly a long way from the typical caching most of us do where we rarely encounter another cacher.
The feature which gave the cache it's name was the now closed "Snoqualmie Tunnel." It's more than two miles long and would have provided easy access for cachers to grab the APE cache till it was shut down due to unsafe conditions. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad opened the tunnel in 1914 at Snoqualmie Pass and used it through 1980 when the railroad went bankrupt. We were only able to walk a few feet up to the portal where it had been gated, but I'd have loved to have gone through the tunnel which turns through the mountain. According to many of the locals though that day is coming soon. Perhaps I will have another chance to make it out here once that's reopened, but I'll be bringing my bike this time as the Iron Horse Trail seems like a great time for cachers on bike. Especially through a couple miles of tunnel.
I was reminded this weekend that there are sometimes good reasons to call off the hunt for a cache early. The first reason was for these very cute baby birds we spotted about 15 feet from ground zero, so we steered clear of them (aside from taking their picture of course). It's not worth risking harm to the natives (aside from ticks and mosquitoes perhaps -- I really dislike them) if we can avoid it. In this cause the cache was just the other side of ground zero and we found it with much more searching. The other reason we were remixes ofthis weekend was for personal safety. With rain all week, but of the grass was holding water on Saturday, but the mud was pretty terrible. Naturally we went through the mud for a few finds, but the near the end we had a reminded of why we need to pay attention. Drie slid but didn't fall down a hill using the mud as the lubricant under her feet. We found the cache and despite some more stumbles among the group, all made it back in good condition. It certainly wasn't worth the risk of someone really hurting themselves to have one more smiley, and a micro in the woods at that. Both served as reminders that sometimes it's just best to move on to the next find.-- Posted From My iPhone
It also prevented me from recording wrappers and two interviews for Cache-A-Maniacs postponing release of this week's show and leaving us without an interview recorded for the following week. A visit to the doctor on Thursday supplied me with a larger selection of prescriptions than usual. They did seem to have the typical affect of draining any energy I had and making the symptoms worse for a couple days. At least during the downtime I was able to get moved into my new laptop (a 15" i7 MacBook Pro) which I'd expected to cause some problems and delays anyhow. Today I am on the mend and feeling much better. Expect my return to the Geocaching Podcast this Tuesday at 9:30PM EDT and that next Cache-A-Maniacs show for this coming Saturday. The next Photography4Cachers article and segment will be postponed at least a week. I'm looking forward to hitting a few of the 10 Years! events this weekend too, so I'm looking for a good report from my follow-up appointment this week. Look for more on that and podcast status updates later this week.-- Posted From My iPhone
We had the opportunity this weekend to hit a pair of CITO events which were very different from each other. The "Garlic Mustard Grab at Friendship Woods" (GC22RD8) by Cyclops on Saturday was one of the newer style CITO events where you work with a park on removal of an invasive species. For this CITO we worked to rid the small 37.5 acre Friendship Woods Nature Center of their Garlic Mustard – an edible plant which has been spreading in North America for hundreds of years. Many parks have given up and allow the weed to spread unchecked but most are still fighting the battle against the immigrant from Europe. Even with more than 30 Geocachers pulling Garlic Mustard for more than an hour we only made a dent. That means we'll have a chance to go back soon for another similar CITO event and pull even more Garlic Mustard.
The Sunday event was the more traditional trash out event, but with a little twist. The "Spring Pool Party 2010" (GC255MN) by South Lyon Trekkers aimed to clean-up a "Park-n-Ride" lot which the Michigan Department of Transportation has not adopted out for clean-ups to this point. Again we had more than 30 Cachers show up to pick-up trash for MDOT's first such adoption. Despite the dirty work collecting the garbage and creating piles of trash bags we really enjoyed the time with our caching friends and that feeling of accomplishment when you look around the parking lot without seeing the cans, cups, and bottles popping up out of the grass and laying against the curbs.
Sometimes the amount of effort we'll go through just to claim a find astounds me. What's best are the smiling faces surrounding those finds. We had the chance do caching with Drie's family (her parents, brother, sister-in-law, and their two children) which has become the default activity when we visit these non-cachers. We hit the trail in a local state park to find a couple caches with the kids and they couldn't get enough. We spilled out to a couple of micros on the way back and they really enjoyed the hunt for those as well. They especially enjoyed hunting for the last one which was more difficult than we expected and nearly gave up on the hunt (but arent those some of the most rewarding finds for any of us?). Sadly they weren't with us for what was the most challenging terrain of the weekend, a cache at the river down about a 12 foot incline. With little room for more than one person I slipped (literally) my way down to the rock outcropping and collected the cache. The tough part was getting myself back up. I'd passed Drie the iPhone, PN-40, and sunglasses before I slid down and she uses my iPhone to get video as I scrabbled out. All that for a terrain 4 cache, and I would say it was worth the effort. The only harm was a little mud on my jeans and hands. For that I get a smiley at Geocaching.com, some silly iPhone video, the photo above, and the memory of a simple but very challenging find. This is why we cache.-- Posted From My iPhone
I spent my February 12 of 12 last year looking at times displayed around me. Tomorrow is time again for another 12 of 12 and I've got a few ideas, but nothing has grabbed my attention as had the time theme of last year. I know I won't be doing the time theme again though - that didn't work out all that well for me as I didn't have enough different displays to shoot and don't want to create occurrences for the project. Tomorrow is a Friday though so there might be something with the last day of the week, possibly planning for the weekend or wrapping up the work week. I haven't turned the camera back at myself in quite some time so maybe that's the direction I'll take (not that I really like shooting myself). The 12 of 12 has always been a fun, challenging, and rewarding project and I'm sure to find something for this month. What are you planning for the February 12 of 12?
I was suddenly reminded today from a post by Chad Darnell that tomorrow is the 12 of 12 again. It had completely slipped my mind that we were even that far along in the month. So that got me thinking about what I was going to do for my 12 of 12 tomorrow. Thinking that I want to really do something simple (it's a work day after all) I came up with the though of doing another macro theme, or possibly another 50mm day since I haven't had the chance to do a 12 of 12 with my new, faster 50mm f/1.4 AF-S lens. So I decided to see what I had done last year for the January 12 of 12. I was surprised to discover that I had done the "Normal Monday" (50mm on the D700) theme then. So perhaps I'll just have the January 12 or 12 my "Normal Day" theme. I still have a few hours to decide, but it's looking like that's where I'll be going.
It occurred to my after yesterday's post that I should mention something about the difference between GSM and CDMA as that is an important driver in the decision on which wireless carrier to use. I'll keep this short as it is a complex topic, but aside from compatibility issues (GSM is common in Europe, CDMA in Asia, the U.S. is mixed) there's a functional difference for smartphone users. Most CDMA devices are not able to use their high-speed data network (EVDO) while talking on the phone. The GSM devices with HSDPA permit data and voice as long as the device is on the high-speed network. So if you're frequently phoning a friend while looking up cache information, look for a 3G GSM carrier (AT&T or T-Mobile in the U.S.). If you're not concerned about concurrent data and voice, look at the CDMA carriers (Sprint and Verizon in the U.S.) as they tend to have better connection quality than does GSM. I tend not to be talking and using data but after having the luxury of using both at the same time it will be hard to go back to just one or the other.
Android's lack of a single hardware platform is as much of a strength as a weakness though. The obvious benefit is the variety of devices (i.e. with or without keyboards, different sizes, and more varied costs) from which to choose (for the record I prefer no hardware keyboards as it allows for a smaller device, without the moving parts, and the onscreen keyboards perform auto-correction making them easier for me to use while walking). That variety in hardware also means there are more issues to contend with for developers and users as the difference between specific units become less predictable. Apple's iPhone 3GS hardware is about halfway through it's product life and we except it will be replaced come June or July. Frankly the iPhone needs to be upgraded as the current Android offerings provide better quality screens and cameras. Likely the biggest strike against the iPhone is that in the U.S. the iPhone is only offered through AT&T. Their service quality and customer service is not attractive or even customer friendly. Meanwhile Android is available from most major carriers and in unlocked versions. So what do I recommend? Basically I take a good look at Android. If you think you can live with its hardware and a little more difficult operation, get it. The iPhone is still an easier platform and better developed making it the better choice for the average users. I suspect that will change within the next nine months as Apple releases their updates and Google works hard to improve Android and the hardware developers release more options in handsets. We're in a very tough period to choose, but my vote today is for the Android (my leading handset right now is the HTC Eris) and when my AT&T contract is up in October I'll probably be jumping off the iPhone ship.
