What's new on Geocaching Australia

[caughtatwork]

I hated the green so much (it made me feel sick) that I went back to using prosilver which is less green but highly icky in so many other ways, so just to annoy future developers (who will need to maintain more styles), I've implemented GCA BLUE as a selectable style (don't you love run on sentences and parenthesis (es)) which you can get to via the User Control Panel, then Board Preferences then My Board Style (middle of the Global Settings, er, um, settings).

It's the same as green, but less pukey

I may also UP the font size depending on my ability to read and click small things.

[Fuddley]

Nice Much easier on the eye

[PesceVerde]

[caughtatwork]

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The requested URL /emoticons/happiness/Content_7.gif was not found on this server

Ohhh, no happiness

[PesceVerde]

Thumbs up, even though they're 'cockroach' colours.

[caughtatwork]

The wishes of the few have outweighed the "log book" requirement of the, er, um, other few The original thread can be read here http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... =2&t=11922

Geocaching Australia is proud to announce it now lists 4,903 Horizontal Control Marks a.k.a. TrigPoints around the country. The list is not exhaustive and may contain inaccuracies. Please act responsibly when chasing down these TrigPoints.

They are all initially set to Difficulty 2 and Terrain 2 and the cache description contains the elevation of the TrigPoint to give you an indication of how much climbing you might be up for.

If you are signed in community member, you have the ability to amend the cache description as well as mark the cache as archived in the event that it is on private property. Please be responsible.

For those of you who live in rural areas or enjoy hunting down TrigPoints we hope that this makes you Geocaching Australia experience more enjoyable.

For the few who will only chase a log book, we apologise for the inconvenience.

A Trig Point is a virtual cache which requires a cacher to locate the Trigonometric Station at GZ.

A trig point (also known as a Trigonometric Station) typically consists of a black disc on top of four metal legs or concrete pillar, resembling a navigation beacon. It is also accompanied by a metal disc, which is located directly below the center point of the tripod or on top of the pillar itself.

Trig points are generally located at the top of hills or points of prominence in the landscape. Many provide unique views and challenges, with some being difficult to get to.

These points were regarded as valuable to surveyors, providing reference points for measuring distance and direction, and assisting in the creation of maps.

To log a find on the Geocaching Australia website, you will need to include a picture of the trig point, along with your GPS receiver and (preferably) yourself. Long distance / telephoto type pictures are against the spirit of this cache. You are encouraged to leave a description of your journey in your log to help others in finding the trig point.

The original collection of trig points has been sourced from Geoscience Australia and may contain inaccuracies.

Please respect local laws and regulations when searching for trig points. If you believe that a trig point is located on private property or in a dangerous location, you may archive the cache, by clicking on Log this Cache and place an "Archived" log on the Geocaching Australia website.

If you feel that you can add to the description of this trig point or adjust the difficulty / terrain ratings, please feel free to edit this cache and amend the information suitably. Vandalism of the cache description or other information will result in your account being terminated.

[caughtatwork]

Apart from importing a TrigPoint from waymarking, you can now also create a TrigPoint directly. This functionality is for those who wish to directly enter a TrigPoint into GCA without having to go through waymarking first.

To keep TrigPoints part of the GCA community of caches, when you create new TrigPoint cache it will automatically assigned to Geocaching Australia, but your name will be placed as "hidden by". They won't come up under your stats though as they are part of the community asset of Geocaching Australia.

When you submit your listing it will be automatically published and will be available for all to see immediately. This means you are free to find the cache immediately.

To hide a new TrigPoint, go to your My Account page, select Hide A New Cache.

Complete the form as necessary selecting TrigPoint as the type. When the page is submitted it will default the container to "other" regardless of what you fill in.

The short and long description as YOU enter it will be used for the cache listing, so please try and be descriptive in your description of the cache.

[caughtatwork]

My Route is a function developed by Geocaching Australia to show you caches within a defined distance from a route you have chosen.

You can define the route using the ease of Google Maps, download the kml file, upload it to GCA along with a name, description and radius from your route.

You can then see the caches along that route either as a list or on a Google Map. You can also see the area which was searched on the Google Map.

Phase 2 of My Route will allow you to select cache types, containers, difficulty and terrain to be shown on your listings.
Phase 3 of My Route will allow you to export a GPX file for any Geocaching Australia caches that appear along your route.

http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/My_Route

[caughtatwork]

Phase 2 of My Route (see above) has been deployed and now allows you to select cache types, containers, difficulty, terrain, exclude/include your finds and owned caches, filter on available/unavailable/archived as finally include all caches or just GCA only.

When you list the cache along your route will see two numbers. The first one is the number of caches along the route. The second one is the number of caches that match your criteria along that route.

For the half a dozen people who have created a route I have set your route to show all caches.

Enjoy.

[setsujoku]

The wishes of the few have outweighed the "log book" requirement of the, er, um, other few The original thread can be read here http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... =2&t=11922

Geocaching Australia is proud to announce it now lists 4,903 Horizontal Control Marks a.k.a. TrigPoints around the country. The list is not exhaustive and may contain inaccuracies. Please act responsibly when chasing down these TrigPoints.

They are all initially set to Difficulty 2 and Terrain 2 and the cache description contains the elevation of the TrigPoint to give you an indication of how much climbing you might be up for.

If you are signed in community member, you have the ability to amend the cache description as well as mark the cache as archived in the event that it is on private property. Please be responsible.

For those of you who live in rural areas or enjoy hunting down TrigPoints we hope that this makes you Geocaching Australia experience more enjoyable.

For the few who will only chase a log book, we apologise for the inconvenience.

Just looking through the various graphs and noticed that with this change, all of a sudden everyone is swimming against a tide that has an extra ~1000 or so caches (if you are in SA that is, give or take a few).
All of a sudden now i'm swimming against a tide of ~3300 caches, whereas in reality it's only ~2400 or so caches.
The new trig points would seem to give a mis-representation that all of a sudden in the last month there were 1018 caches placed , up on the previous record of a meagre 159 in June this year!

I know it's only numbers and stats but it does make a significant difference when you are looking at some graphs more than others

[Bewilderbeest]

All of a sudden now i'm swimming against a tide of ~3300 caches, whereas in reality it's only ~2400 or so caches.

Yep, after battling in recent months to keep the "tide" under 300 caches, suddenly I find myself comfortably under the 400 barrier. At least I should be able to keep under that number for at least this summer.

[caughtatwork]

Phase 3 of My Route (see above) has been deployed and now allows you to create a GPX or ZIP file for GCA caches along your route or to send any GC caches along your route to your Garmin GPS.

Enjoy.

[caughtatwork]

http://geocaching.com.au/shop/

You can get to the shop from the navigation tabs at the top of the page.

We currently have 3 real products (2 different stickers and the new GCA Pathtags) and 1 virtual product (a donation to the site).

So now you can go buy and pay through PayPal (you pay me at the moment) and then your presents will arrive magically at your door (well, letterbox), hopefully not too much later. Saves all the hassle of self addressed envelopes and cash through the mail and me forgetting that I need to check the mailbox.

I hope you can patronise our shop and help us to generate a little money towards the ongoing costs of the GCA webserver and some more fun products in the future.

Geocaching Australia is a free site run by volunteers and is not affiliated with any other web site. As such we sell a minimal number of products through our shop of which all profits are returned to the website for ongoing costs of running the webserver.

We only offer our products to Australian residents but you don't have to be a member of Geocaching Australia to make a purchase. Your account details in the shop are not mingled with the registrations for the Geocaching Australia website keeping your details totally separate.

We only offer payment through Paypal using either your Paypal account balance or a credit card. You do not need to be a member of Paypal if you want to pay using a credit card. Payments are made to the account of caughtatwork, one of your friendly developers, to keep fees and charges to a minimum.

We charge a flat rate shipping charge of $2.00 per order which covers our fees to Paypal as well as the various envelopes and postage.

[SG-3]

And very smooth to use it is too! Ordered some pathtags straight away! Thanks for this!

[mundoo]

Very nice.

Ordering was simple and easy. Ordered pathtags.