Sunday, March 18, 2012

About Adrian Faulkner

Adrian Faulkner is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. He is an active geocacher with over 9000 finds to his name. You can find more by Adrian at AdrianFaulkner.com and on his Google Plus page.

Could Pokemon Become The Next Big GPS Game?

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Could 2016 be the year Pokemon dominates the geolocation game space? If Nintendo have their way, it very well could be.

Nintendo and the Pokemon Company have teamed up with Niantic Inc to announce that they intend to release the first Pokemon Geolocation game next year.  Called Pokemon Go, the game will be available free of charge for Android and iPhone mobile devices, although Nintendo does warn that there will be the dreaded in-app transactions.

The Pokemon franchise began life as a videogame for the Ninetendo Game Boy back in 1996 and has since spawned a number of sequels, comic books and movies.  However the Pokemon Go augmented reality app would be a new departure for the franchise. read more

Five Ideas For Missions For Your Trackables

An assortment of geocaching trackables

An assortment of trackables

Getting a new trackable is always exciting.  First there is the allure of the physical object, art on a keychain or in the shape of a coin.  These are often stunning pieces of work and you can’t help but marvel at the design or craft that has gone into making it a physical object.  But after that initial excitement has disappeared, you’ll find yourself with a second hit, as you consider what to do with it.

It’s possible that you have purchased the trackable with a mission in mind, but if it’s a gift or something you bought for the design then you might finding yourself wondering whether to set it off on a mission or keep in your personal collection.

Whilst some designs are so good that you may ultimately decide that this trackable will only be discoverable at events you take it too, there is the thrill of sending a trackable out into the world and seeing how far it will travel.  Will it be muggled two miles down the road from where you placed it in a cache, or will it circumvent the globe multiple times?

But if you do decide to let it go, what do you make its mission?  Make it too restrictive and it’ll never move.  With that in mind, here are five ideas of missions for your trackables that will keep them moving and hopefully bring you some enjoyable logs.

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Five Cache Types To Do Before They’re Gone

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When you first started Geocaching you were probably unaware of all the different cache types.  You thought that geocaching was as simple as turning up to a set of co-ordinates and finding the container hidden there.  As you progressed you probably became vaguely aware of multi-caches and puzzle caches.  Your first multi had you going to a number of locations gathering clues in order to derive the cache’s final co-ordinates.  Your first puzzle cache had you sat at your computer scratching your head as you tried to work out some cryptic puzzle, designed to test your mental abilities, before delivering you the location of the actual container.

In your day to day geocaching these are the three cache types you will primarily encounter.  But are you aware that there are many other types as well?  Some of you may have attended an event and collected the icon for that, but there are many more besides, running from Benchmarks to the GPS Maze Exhibit.  You may have even been lucky enough to collect the recent new Giga event icon or have visited an earthcache.

Whilst people can, providing they meet all the criteria, set up new caches with these icons, there are a few where they can’t.  Some cache types have been retired, allowing existing caches to remain and be logged as long as the cache remains but not allow for new caches of this type to be set up.  As time passes on and more of these caches get archived, these types only get rarer and rarer.  Some types, such as locationless caches, have completely disappeared from the game with cachers unable to even log one any more.  Others are in danger of joining these archived cache types.

So with that in mind, here are five cache types that we recommend Geocachers go out and find before they disappear from the game. read more

The Benefits of Premium Membership

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If you’ve been geocaching for a little while, you’ve probably heard cachers talk about being premium members of the geocaching.com website.  Some people will swear by it whilst others will feel that it adds nothing to their caching experience.  As a result it can sometimes be difficult to fully understand what benefits premium membership actually confers.  So this month, I thought I would look at some of the main reasons you might want to become a premium member. read more

Your First Geocaching Find

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Finding your first geocache can be a big deal.  You’ve found out about this amazing hobby and have discovered there are hundreds, if not thousands, of geocaches around you.  You want to go and find one, you want to try out the hobby.  But which one do you pick to do first?

There’s huge variety in geocaches.  Some are big, some are small.  Some are easy to find, some are hard.  Some you can find in a wheelchair, others need climbing rope.   And picking the wrong one to start off with can lead to massive disappointment or conviction that the geocache can’t possibly be there.

A lot of the skill involved with geocaching is to do with familiarity, about having seen similar methods or hides before.  So if you’re thinking of heading out to find your first geocache, here’s how you can make it an enjoyable and hopefully successful adventure. read more

Getting Ready For Geocaching

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With spring looming, a new season of geocaching is nearly upon us.  With it comes an influx of new people to the hobby.  Regular geocachers will be familiar with the concept of a geocaching kit bag but for the benefit of those just starting out, this month we’re going to go over the basic items you need to geocache efficiently and safely. read more

Your 2015 Geocaching Resolutions

 

It’s that time of year when we can’t help but look back and review what we’ve accomplished in the past year.  Accompanying it is the inevitable list of resolutions for the year ahead and it’s a safe bet to assume that at least some of them will include aims along the lines of “eat less” and “exercise more”.

This is where Geocaching can help.  Not only is walking along trails, clambering up embankments and battling undergrowth considered good exercise, the fresh air brings its own health benefits as well.  As a result, to “Geocache more” is a good resolution to have.

But what if you’re trying to find some motivation to encourage you to get out geocaching more regularly?  Well, here are some ideas for geocaching challenges that can make perfect resolutions for the year ahead. read more

5 Things They Never Tell Newbies About Geocaching Trackables

An assortment of geocaching trackables

An assortment of trackables

Becoming a geocacher can be slightly overwhelming.  Not only do you have to learn how to use a GPSr to get to your location and then hunt for a geocache, but there’s also a wealth of information, acronyms and unwritten do’s and don’ts  to contend with.

One of the areas that is a constant source of confusion are trackables.  I wrote an article last year introducing what trackables were and how you went about logging them but there are a number of unwritten rules that a lot of newbies get wrong.  So here to help them out are five things they never tell newbie geocachers about geocoins and travel bugs. read more

Geocaching Souvenirs

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It’s natural for geocachers to want to showcase their accomplishments but all too often that can boil down to simple numbers or statistics.  Some geocachers aren’t interested in the number of caches they find but just want to showcase that they attended a special event or found a cache in a different location.

For a number of years, cache owners have created online virtual badges for attendees or finders to display on their profile page.  These can range from showcasing attendance of a specific geocaching event to having completed a series of caches.  The problem with these is severalfold.  They are arbitrary and depend on the cache owner taking the time to create the graphic and provide the code for you to add to your profile.  You then need to go in and manually add them, meaning that if you’re not familiar with HTML or web programming languages you can easily get yourself into a mess. read more

Enhancing Geocaching.com with Greasemonkey & Tampermonkey Scripts

Back at the start of the year we saw some historic rainfall here in the United Kingdom.  Rivers burst their banks and huge swathes of the countryside were under several feet of water.  It made planning the weekly geocaching trip even more difficult – I didn’t want to do a twenty mile circular walk only to find the final mile back to the car blocked by floodwater.

It was in my frustration of consulting governmental flood maps and correlating them with geocaching maps that I discovered the wonderful world of the Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey script.

Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey are plugins (for Firefox and Google Chrome respectively) that allow you to install scripts to modify your favorite web pages.  It all sounds a bit complicated but in essence they allow you to do things such as get Google Search results to appear in two columns rather than just one, or show the buffer speed of the YouTube video you are watching. read more