What's new on Geocaching Australia

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 07 February 08 7:11 pm

New Subtabs on cacher pages
eg. http://geocaching.com.au/cacher/caughtatwork

In order to reduce the overall load on the server, the details provided on a cacher page have been separated into selectable sub tabs.

At the moment, you can select from logs, hides, swaggies and hotlists. Hotlists are the lists of things like First to Find, Recommendations, Watchlist, etc.

We appreciate this means a few more clicks, but the reduction of database accesses for a single page should improve the performance of the server.

This will also assist the people on dial up access as the size of a given cacher page should now be somewhat reduced.

Thank you for being understanding.

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 12 February 08 9:28 am

Caches by Hidden Date Range

From the caches navigation tab, you can now see the hidden date ranges for all caches in Australia and New Zealand broken down by state.

Direct link:
http://geocaching.com.au/stats/range/

Why?
Say you want to be able to get a download of all of the caches in a particular state, but you aren't sure how to go about setting up your date ranges to ensure you don't overlap and make the best use of your downloads.

Rather than trial and error, this list will show you the number of caches in each date range, limited to 500 caches per range. Very handy when you want the ranges for the very first time or to update your ranges after you have been downloading for a while.

The list is generated once daily for speed of access.

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setsujoku
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Post by setsujoku » 12 February 08 9:34 am

Now that is so useful it isn't funny, especially for any new cachers, or people that are new to a state

Top work

team unicycle
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Post by team unicycle » 12 February 08 12:58 pm

caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range
Yes, this is sure to reduce the load on the gc.com servers, as people will not have to run repeated test queries. Of course, gc.com will still have the overhead of running 5 queries selected by state and date, instead of 1 query selected only by state, but that's their problem :P


Is it possible to build in a small margin for re-enabled caches? This caught me out once when I set the queries to exactly 500 entries.

Nice work.

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 12 February 08 1:35 pm

team unicycle wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range
Yes, this is sure to reduce the load on the gc.com servers, as people will not have to run repeated test queries. Of course, gc.com will still have the overhead of running 5 queries selected by state and date, instead of 1 query selected only by state, but that's their problem :P


Is it possible to build in a small margin for re-enabled caches? This caught me out once when I set the queries to exactly 500 entries.

Nice work.
That number is probably in there already. As GCA doesn't get all archived cache logs, there will be some caches that we think are active and therefore included that GC won't include as they are actually archived. I can't guarantee that each file has one or two spare though.

What sort of "buffer" were you thinking of?

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calumphing_four
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Post by calumphing_four » 12 February 08 3:25 pm

caughtatwork wrote:
team unicycle wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range
Yes, this is sure to reduce the load on the gc.com servers, as people will not have to run repeated test queries. Of course, gc.com will still have the overhead of running 5 queries selected by state and date, instead of 1 query selected only by state, but that's their problem :P


Is it possible to build in a small margin for re-enabled caches? This caught me out once when I set the queries to exactly 500 entries.

Nice work.
That number is probably in there already. As GCA doesn't get all archived cache logs, there will be some caches that we think are active and therefore included that GC won't include as they are actually archived. I can't guarantee that each file has one or two spare though.

What sort of "buffer" were you thinking of?
I'm assuming that this list isn't static and would automatically update if old caches were re-enabled/archived.<br> An indication of when an "end/begin date" changes would be useful to check one has the latest setting for their GC query.<br>
With a buffer of 1 if one's query returned 500 caches one would also be prompted to check the info in the above link if they didn't check it regularly anyway. If the number of caches was dropping in a query there is no rush to change (until the "newest list" hits 500)<br>
Hope this makes sense - love your work.<br>
Cheers 8)

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 12 February 08 5:00 pm

calumphing_four wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:
team unicycle wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range
Yes, this is sure to reduce the load on the gc.com servers, as people will not have to run repeated test queries. Of course, gc.com will still have the overhead of running 5 queries selected by state and date, instead of 1 query selected only by state, but that's their problem :P


Is it possible to build in a small margin for re-enabled caches? This caught me out once when I set the queries to exactly 500 entries.

Nice work.
That number is probably in there already. As GCA doesn't get all archived cache logs, there will be some caches that we think are active and therefore included that GC won't include as they are actually archived. I can't guarantee that each file has one or two spare though.

What sort of "buffer" were you thinking of?
I'm assuming that this list isn't static and would automatically update if old caches were re-enabled/archived.<br> An indication of when an "end/begin date" changes would be useful to check one has the latest setting for their GC query.<br>
With a buffer of 1 if one's query returned 500 caches one would also be prompted to check the info in the above link if they didn't check it regularly anyway. If the number of caches was dropping in a query there is no rush to change (until the "newest list" hits 500)<br>
Hope this makes sense - love your work.<br>
Cheers 8)
The list is updated automagically on the first viewing of each day. For the rest of the day it is static.

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CraigRat
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Zones

Post by CraigRat » 13 February 08 10:05 pm

New to the site : Zones
http://geocaching.com.au/zone/

What are Zones?
Zones are community created geographic regions that can be uploaded to Geocaching Australia

These will be used for many purposes, for example:

* Flagging of areas where geocaching is banned or restricted
* Postcode boundaries
* Many other uses we haven't though of yet!

At the moment, we are concentrating on building the restricted areas database.
If you would like to contribute, please see our wiki HOWTO for more information

We believe that by providing this information to cache hider, we can empower GCA cache hiders to make more informed decisions about how/where they hide their geocaches.

If you would like to help out, read up on the links, and submit some zones!

They will be checked before being activated to prevent database issues, and as the system matures we will extend the features and zone types to cover all kinds of things (whatever cool uses you can think of!).

Heres a picture to show what the heck I'm on about Anakie Gorge zone by c@w:
Image

When you create your GCA cache and it is in a restricted zone, you will get a warning message linking you to the zone and telling you why you should reconsider the hide.

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 18 February 08 7:52 pm

caughtatwork wrote:New Subtabs on cacher pages
eg. http://geocaching.com.au/cacher/caughtatwork

In order to reduce the overall load on the server, the details provided on a cacher page have been separated into selectable sub tabs.

At the moment, you can select from logs, hides, swaggies and hotlists. Hotlists are the lists of things like First to Find, Recommendations, Watchlist, etc.

We appreciate this means a few more clicks, but the reduction of database accesses for a single page should improve the performance of the server.

This will also assist the people on dial up access as the size of a given cacher page should now be somewhat reduced.

Thank you for being understanding.
Further to this, the cacher statistics are now also viewed via subtabs. Again, this is to introduce some speed bumps into the system to reduce the drain on the server.

http://geocaching.com.au/cacher/caughtatwork as an example.

There are now 6 subtabs, some of which have further drop downs for detailed navigation.

You can view the details of the cacher with relation to logs, hides, swaggies and hotlists.

You can view their statistics with relation to finds, hides, general and milestones.

Bringing the navigation for a cacher into one consistent view, you can now also select gallery, graphs, plots and their stats bar from the same subtab navigation.

These selections have been removed from the right hand navigation section for a particular cacher.

You should find that as long as you are on a page relating to a cacher, you can see all of their details via the subtabs.

This new navigation scheme does not invalidate any previous links you may have with 1 exception.

http://geocaching.com.au/cacher/statistics/caughtatwork will automatically redirect you to http://geocaching.com.au/cacher/caughtatwork which is the standard profile for a particular cacher.

This ensures that we don't inconvenience you too much with having to update your links.

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SamCarter
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Post by SamCarter » 18 February 08 10:12 pm

I am in awe. Faeries, I salute you. (Feeble and very obscure bad pun coming up: I checked out the plots page, but my watched plot never boiled. :lol: )

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SG-3
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Post by SG-3 » 19 February 08 6:30 pm

In the immortal words of Spock: "The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few!" Alas, drop downs don't work on IE for WM5... no longer can I easily monitor my arch-nemiseseseses while stopping half a half a dozen 21-month-olds from killing eachother/themselves upstairs! Curse you, samcarter! Curse you, Microsoft! Curse you, Eddie Maguire! (I'm sure he was in on this!) Curse you... OK, shutting up now....

Does the eeeeeeeeeepc have WiFi? :lol:

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Richary
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Post by Richary » 19 February 08 8:25 pm

caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range

From the caches navigation tab, you can now see the hidden date ranges for all caches in Australia and New Zealand broken down by state.
<p>I am guessing in answer to the question of it being exactly 500, this list would include GCA caches? So then the gc.com query would generate somewhat less?<p>

Extremely useful feature though, wish I had that when I first moved to Sydney instead of having to ask for help and doing some experimentation.

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 19 February 08 10:19 pm

SG-3 wrote:In the immortal words of Spock: "The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few!" Alas, drop downs don't work on IE for WM5... no longer can I easily monitor my arch-nemiseseseses while stopping half a half a dozen 21-month-olds from killing eachother/themselves upstairs! Curse you, samcarter! Curse you, Microsoft! Curse you, Eddie Maguire! (I'm sure he was in on this!) Curse you... OK, shutting up now....

Does the eeeeeeeeeepc have WiFi? :lol:
Actually, I'm glad you posted. There was a bug that was affecting Internet Explorer (which I had tested against IE7, but didn't against IE6) and the 2nd subtabs weren't dropping down. It's highly likely that the same bug was affecting IE on WM5. Please try again and see if it's working now.

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caughtatwork
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Post by caughtatwork » 19 February 08 10:23 pm

richary wrote:
caughtatwork wrote:Caches by Hidden Date Range

From the caches navigation tab, you can now see the hidden date ranges for all caches in Australia and New Zealand broken down by state.
<p>I am guessing in answer to the question of it being exactly 500, this list would include GCA caches? So then the gc.com query would generate somewhat less?<p>

Extremely useful feature though, wish I had that when I first moved to Sydney instead of having to ask for help and doing some experimentation.
Despite my wording in the above post, it's actually only for GC caches. Shutterspots and GCA caches are ignored completely for this function.

So if the list says 500, it 'should' be 500 GC caches. You have to accept that there are going to be a few caches that GCA doesn't yet know are archived, so while we think there are 500, there may be a few less.

The page has a heading of:
GC Caches by Hidden Date Range
This is mean to signify GC only caches.

Sorry for the confusion.

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The Spindoctors
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Post by The Spindoctors » 19 February 08 11:32 pm

Craigrat - regarding the zones feature. This is EXCELLENT. It puts the onus back on the hider to make the decision.

I think this should be set up for all NSW National Parks, so that future hiders are aware of the policy in this state. I'll be happy to assist in this.

Is there a database already around that contains a list of NSW Parks boundaries?

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