Monday, April 19th, 2010
While I panned Crush It!, I have to hand it to Gary Vaynerchuk. He remembered to e-mail me about something. The personal touch lends to his credibility . . . Tech Crunch has an interesting article about an open database of places, logged by coordinates. This will effectively kill Waymarking, as far as I can see. Will Groundspeak be able to keep up with the likes of Foursquare and Twitter? . . . Taxes are up, government “revenue” is down. There’s a correlation there . . . Despite last evening’s loss, the Phillies offense is awesome! . . . Speaking of baseball, the Mets-Cardinals 20-inning game was a lot of fun to watch . . . The election for Vineland’s BOE certainly has raised the tempers of some . . . I was reminded that I used to be a member of the KISS Army . . . Watching your child play softball for the first time is something I will remember for a long time. I am so proud of my little one . . . It’s Monday and I am so thoroughly exhausted as though it’s the end of the week . . . Is anyone surprised that Goldman Sacs bet against what it was selling? Goldman is so embedded in government (just ask Greg Craig), it’s dangerous . . .
Posted in Baseball, Education, GPS Games, Politics, Sports | No Comments »
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Geo-location is a crowded market. It seems like every app these days includes geo-location data, whether it is needed or not.
Admittedly, I have an interest in geo-location. Shoot, my free time is consumed by it. The hot trend now is checking in at various locations. It’s valuable information for businesses, but right now other than futzing around, there isn’t much for the end user other than the kewlness factor.
Like all emerging markets, there’s a rush to win the early adopters. Will it be Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, etc.?
There’s a new player entering the market. Good ol’ Jeremy Irish is putting Groundspeak right smack in the middle of all this with its new service Whibbit. Gotta love those premium memberships footing the growth into new markets, eh?
I’ll be interested in seeing how this is marketed. It appears Whibbit is going to expand into the asking questions end of things. While that appeals to some, I suspect it will not draw a heavy user base.
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
This is the latest chuckle from Groundspeak:
Paying members or otherwise have no “right” to know the private dealings and discussions between Groundspeak and a cache owner nor between Groundspeak and a volunteer reviewer.
Ha ha ha! . . . How come when I opted out of being on Audible’s mailing list, I was informed it would take 10 days to get me off? That is unbelievable in this day . . . Getting ready to work with St. Stephen seguing into The Eleven is definitely the way to ensure a happy disposition . . . My daughter multi-tasks: she plays both Farmville and Cafe World at the same time. Scary . . . Thank you veterans. My day off, the time with my son, and the joy of smoking this turkey are all due to you. God bless you . . . Today’s evidence that you can find anything on the Internet, I offer you this video. Kewl. Who knew? . . .
And just to start the day off correctly, this is what I had for breakfast . . . The Spectrum is selling off seats prior to its demolition. Too bad I can’t purchase specific seats. I just may have put up for these seats . . . Millville’s Christmas tree is in place . . . The Soprano State should be required reading for taxpayers. Doing so will takeaway the wonder why there are so many commissions. Commissions/agencies can borrow money without taxpayer approval. Just today it was announced that one of these will use some of its our money to pay/bribe lure foreign businesses to Millville. Sigh . . . While I understand the issue with how to introduce Mark McGwire as the Cardinals new hitting coach (and there’s not an easy way to overcome that given the almost certainty that he cheated), what is more amazing is that any team thought McGwire had something to ffer as a hitting coach. Other than home runs, what are your impressions of McGwire as a hitter? . . .
Posted in Baseball, Concerts, Culinary, Entertainment, Family, GPS Games, Geocaching, New Jersey, Politics, Sports | No Comments »
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Just took a look at the Groundspeak fora. It’s good that consistency prevails. The cesspool discussion area thrives. A namecalling thread egged on by Mr. O’Connell makes elementary school look mature in comparison . . . It seems that despite property taxes rising more than 9% in Chicago this year, the Obama’s house will only see a rise of 1% in property taxes . . . The nearest unfound shutterspot to me is 177km. After this week, I hope the nearest one will be 322km . . . the latest New Jersey gubernatorial poll has Christie up 47-41 over Corzine. While that is good, I hope that does not provide comfort for those who want to vote their conscience for Daggett at the expense of Christie. I am not a diehard Christie fan, but it is important to remove Corzine from office . . . Alas, it does not look good for my Phillies. The bats have been too quiet. I’ll give the Yankees credit for that. Our pitching has not been spectacular either, but the bats are the main concern . . . FWIW, my children put such a smile on my face! I love you two . . .
Posted in Baseball, Family, GPS Games, Geocaching, Politics, Sports | No Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
The organization of the photographs and videos has been slow going this past week. Cranking through 1000 photographs daily becomes tedious, so I have been doing other things. Last night I decided to re-visit another organizational process I had shelved several times previously.
Back in the beginning of 2003 I began building a database to store my geocaching information. For a while, it was tweaked, and efficient. My To-Do list on that project was large, but I accomplished most of it. Then things became weird. I split the database for efficiency’s sake. Then I began a toal re-write. Then I began experimenting with GSAK. Then I had a complete mess.
Coordinates were here, there, and everywhere. The same could be said for my logs and notes.
For a few years now, I could not go to one place and get all my data. Today I took great strides in remedying that.
I have basically retired my homespun databases at this point. While there is a plethora of routines that I lose in doing so, the efficiency of working out of GSAK is more important at this point. Most of what I do now is manipulate coordinates to load into the GPSr. The other stuff, while interesting, has taken to the back burner more and more in recent times.
Today I scaled down the number of GSAK databases I have to 16. I think that is as pared down as I can get and run what I want. Actually, there is another database I could prune and probably will as I work out a few things with my working db.
One of the drawbacks I have had with GSAk over the years is that much of its functionality is predicated on proprietary GPX files. Good software should not be beholden to proprietary data schemes. More and more I have learned how to navigate those obstacles. Even so, I keep running into issues. Exhausted in the middle of the night I had to ask Clyde for help. Reading the Help file led me to believe USA was the appropriate structure for the country field. Yet, my macro wouldn’t work. D’oh! Groundspeak populates the field as United States. Minor, but there was no way to prevent my mistake since the Help file stated USA.
Anyhow, after that I got onto a roll. While I still do not have all the logs for geocaches in GSAK and I lost (intentionally pruned the mess is more like it) the confusing notes I had that documented what was done in the databases, blog, and flickr accounts, I am now organized so I think I can actually plan efficient outings drawing from 15 databases to the working file. It’s always been a struggle combining geocaches, scavenger hunts, shutterspots, dashpoints, etc. for an outing. It’s the hell I have for enjoying playing so many games. 
Anyhow, I hadn’t expected to deal with this thinking it was a much larger task than it turned out to be. A few hours of work and more than 100,000 waypoints are organized. Kewl beans.
All that and I finally loaded the custom topo maps of South Jersey that Boyd created. With all the issues I had with Rocky, this was totally forgotten. Things look really good, although it appears the re-draws are slow. I wonder if a larger SD card might help. Doubtful. Will have to test this in the field. The maps are beautiful!
Posted in GPS Games, Geocaching, TerraCaching | 2 Comments »
