I ran a test installation of gsak 7 on my pc this week. The main reason for this was to install the statistics macro to generate the stats for my geocaching finds. There were a few prerequisites below – links point to the download page rather than the actual file to ensure new updates get downloaded.
First download the cutting edge, most feature packed aka beta version of Gsak 7.
Install the latest patch to bring you up to 7.1 build 64
Finally download the
FindstatGenv3 and whilst you are at it, I would highly recommend the Google Maps export macro too that produces a very cool google maps interfaces to caches.
Once you have downloaded and run the Stats macro, I recommend you download your “My finds” pocket query from Geocaching.com and save the results into a temporary GSAK database. This means the macro has less work to do as it only has to look through one log – yours. Even if you don’t do this the results are outstanding. The stats generation used to take 4 minutes to run in version2 of the macro – it now takes 20 seconds! The output can be seen at my Geocaching.com profile (although this is using the old version stats -I’ve not uploaded the new ones yet)
GSAK 7 beta and stats
2007 Jeep signup
This year the jeep travelbugs are red and you can sign up to receive one to put out in your nearby cache. I’ve requested one so will hopefully get one. It seemed to work ok with the diabetes travel bugs and this way also means that I will get to see at least one Jeep – I never got to log the first yellow jeeps but did manage to get a couple of the white ones when they came out – they were bigger than I was expecting.
Geocaching greasemonkey scripts
If you have firefox and greasemonkey installed (and if not why not?) then check out the greasemonkey scripts at Locusprime that enhance some of the website pages. There are some really nice enhancements here – I’ll leave you to go search the site and start enhancing your cache viewing.
LilDevil also has a couple of greasemonkey scripts for caching too (some of the scripts overlap each other)
500 (and more)
Saturday I went caching with Team JNLe4 and hit my 500th geocache – Aslan’s lair and also continued to do 5 more after that (we couldn’t stop). I was intending to try and make a meeting on Sunday as my 500th cache, but we were having a good time in Newark, it was still early in the day and more caches left to do so we kept going. We had a great time caching – it’s definitely more fun when there is more than one of you caching. I also got my first earthcache – A Cryptozological EarthCache so that is another icon on my caching stats page.
New caching map tool
I discovered myGME this evening whilst doing some gsak work/experimentation. This gsak macro allows you to get a google map of all the caches in your currently defined filter set with a radius circle predefined to show you the caches within that area. If you want to move the area, you select the red marker icons and move them to the center of the circle and the distance away from the center. It works great. Takes a while to load if you have a lot of caches mind.
The graphic below shows the initial output for the geocaches near Hocking Hills.
Geocaching photo’s
Most of my online geocaching photos will now be in my Zooomr Geocaching set. I’ve uploaded todays pictures here too.
A cache!
I actually got to go out and do some geocaching this evening as the weather was so nice. Unfortunately I only found one cache, Wyandot Trading Post due to the number of muggles at the other caches I tried to do. However I posted some pictures at flickr and whilst doing this I noticed that the time on the gps was wrong as it hadn’t updated automatically. I thought that the gps’s got their time from satellites (which I still think they do) but they don’t know that Daylight Saving has kicked in. Once I turned it on in the gps the time was correct. I also had to change the time on the camera, but that was because it was set to 8.24am and not 8.24pm which meant the process of geotagging the images was very painful.
I did upgrade my gps by using the Garmin Web Updater which upgraded me 4 versions of firmware – some of the newer garmin gps’s have new firmware available.
More Caching maps
I’ve fiddled around with my google maps and now have the following two maps (that will be added to the sidebar). Firstly I have my UK finds and also my US finds, centred around Ohio. Both of these maps actually use the same set of data, the zoom and centre location is just set to show the UK and Ohio respectively. As the locationless caches distort the location of the caches that have been found I have also amended the data to not show locationless caches anymore.
Note that each map will open in a new window and you will need a screen resolution capable of showing 1000*800 characters. You will have to wait a few seconds after the screen has loaded for google to display the results.
Garmin support =not good.
The Legend GPS arrived last night and I eagerly tried to install the software – installing the software on the computer worked great – unfortunately the product activation does not work and I can’t install the maps to the gps. The activation runs through the process, tells me there is an unlock code, but doesn’t actually unlock it. Garmin’s phone support is only open 8-5 – whilst I am working which is useless if they want me to try various things on the computer as I’m not going to be there.
I managed to get lunch at home today so called them – there’s currently a 30 minute wait. So I thought i’d email them – their autoreply on the website states that the response time is 5-7 business days! What sort of response is that to customers? I’ve purchased software that i want to use NOW – not next week.
If you are going to do product activation like Microsoft does, then at least have the support to provide activation 24/7 so your customers can use something they have paid for.
Grrrrrrrrr