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Geocaching Forums and People
Forums can forge a community, the encourage exchange of ideas and opinions making them a good source of information to those both new and old to Geocaching. Bonds to people can be both forged and lost within the space of a few written words. At the centre of a forum is not the software or the server with its army of overworked hamsters that it runs on, although these play a small part, but its users for it is these that either make it a success or failure.
Five years ago the main forum for the UK was via Geocaching.com, through the politics and the rules that Groundspeak has imposed on cachers as the hobby pastime has grown it has encouraged the birth of local regional forums in the UK. Usually these are run with fewer rules and are on a more personal basis.
The effect of this on Groundspeaks forum is that some cachers are less likely to frequent the United Kingdom and Ireland forum within Geocaching.com becoming reliant on the regional forums that have been set up therefore somewhat fracturing the previous community where everyone would get to know cachers names from other parts of the country. It has also caused a dilution of knowledge, although this has not really shown due to the strength of the knowledge present.
There are different types of people/posts when it comes to forums
- Just plugging the kettle in
Usually a new user that jumps straight in without filling up or switching on to the community and what goes on within it and then may provoke the next type
of poster resulting in them either apologising for their mistakes or never returning to the forums due to embarrassment. - The Kettle is just being switched on
Something in the forum ignites a mischief in the poster and the reply is sarcastic, whilst they may give a good answer to a question it may cause problems to a new user that does not understand their humor. - The partially boiled kettle betting primed ready to heat things up bringing it to boiling.
These people whilst they can be helpful at times tend to have the opinion that the rules of a forum are to be broken and no one should enforce them and take great umbrage when they are officially moderated. - The Filling of the Teapot
These are posters that that just go with the flow and have no strong viewpoint, they will give good answers to queries but will not offend or overstep any marks set within the forum. - The Weak Brew
The poster has a point to prove in public that may have been handled better privately with the moderator, when the moderator is proved right the point is lost and they tend to try to make it a personal issue within the forums. - Stewed and Brewed
The poster stands back and watches the thread develop to its near completion, then post and summarizes the thread with their thoughts giving a measured reply
- The Empty Tea Cup
Never goes near the forum understands what a forum can do but does not want anything to do with one and does not want any problem brought to their door. - The Full Tea Cup
Otherwise known as the lurker, reads the forum but never posts in it.
By not using all the forums available you can get a blinkered view of caching and all the issues that arise in Geocaching . Even in the use of the Groundspeak forums a lot people tend to have a blinkered view of caching reading only the United Kingdom and Ireland forum section and forgetting what other knowledge can be gained from reading other sections that may be of use to them. By using GAGB’s forums you may become more aware of cache placement issues and any of the problems that are currently arising with landowners.
Use of the local forums when caching outside of your own area can be a good way of gauging how good caches are in that area and also as a way of getting recommendations to caches that might stand out from the crowd and be different. Just because you live outside that area doesn’t mean that you cannot use them
The Secret Life of a Geocoin
People trade them, collect them or set them free but what is the life of a geocoin?
When I started caching back in 2005 there were very few geocoins around. Most were non-trackable and were used either as signature items or as trade items. At that time the few trackable geocoins were something special to find in a cache and rarer than the more commonly seen travel bugs. There was only a limited number in circulation, not the thousands in every design, shape and size that there are today.
Boxing Clever
A Good Cache
So what makes a good cache, a good cache is a cache with a few elements that becomes memorable to the finders. These elements may be a good well thought out puzzle, hide, location or in the case of a Multi-cache/Wherigo it may:-
- be a group of locations that may tell a story
- educate and/or inform the cacher who are hoping to get the find.
- make the cacher look at a local area in a new light
International Postage
We understand that international postage can be expensive, for this reason we allow you to place a order and we will endeavour to find the cheapest method of postage for your order.
Romaldkirk to Cothersone Circular
was meant to stay in and tidy up yesterday but the opportunity to get a bit further out of my normal area, 3 caches on route, managed to forget all together about one 
but got the other two 
Map your trip with EveryTrail
Portable Power
So your out in the middle of knowwhere and the battery runs flat on your laptop, phone or your PDA or your going away for a weekend with no access to mains power,But packing chargers for each individual device can be a pain and takes up precious space in your suitcase or overnight bag. within this post I am going to look at some solutions.
Geotees.co.uk domain outage
There was a couple of hours where the co.uk domain was not working last night as we moved the domain to this server, this has all been done now and normal service has been resumed
We’ve moved – so whats happening
This morning the cart moved from one hosting company to another and is now hosted under the GeoTees.eu domain name. It meant I had work to do, its been in the planning/discussion for the past few months to change the server. We bought the webspace got the cart working then emptied the database, prepared the front pages in order to direct people from the old server ready for just to pick a time to do it. So last night I started copying the database from old server, but I just wanted to go to bed having driven to Nottingham and back helping a neighbour move house in the previous two days. I gave in and went to bed. I woke up around 5am couldn’t get back to sleep so I thought I’d better just get up and do it, whilst it would be dead, although one or two people did manage to catch me at it towards the end
The History Of Geocaching
What is Geocaching
The History
GPS, or Global Positioning System, was developed by the US Department of Defense. This satellite navigation system was intended for military use and therefore the signals were scrambled, limiting accuracy for civilian use to about 100 meters. On May 1, 2000, President Clinton announced that this scrambling, known as Selective Availability (SA), would be turned off. Civilians were then able to enjoy accuracy on the order of 10 meters.