#Geocaching Finds - 5/21/10

We had a lot of fun this evening - got the repairs made to Tow Mater's Toolbox easily enough.  Krissyilene ended up coming along for the trip so we had an extra set of hands to help with the baby - always much appreciated!  Here's the results:

	5/21/2010	XAJacksons couldn't find Forgotten (Traditional Cache)	Texas	Visit Log
	5/21/2010	XAJacksons found every other weekend (Traditional Cache)	Texas	Visit Log
	5/21/2010	XAJacksons placed Lucky Glow Pig (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in Tow Mater's Toolbox	Texas	Visit Log
	5/21/2010	XAJacksons placed Travel Bug Sueie (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in Tow Mater's Toolbox	Texas	Visit Log
	5/21/2010	XAJacksons placed Travel Bug, BUG! (Travel Bug Dog Tag) in Tow Mater's Toolbox	Texas	Visit Log
	4/1/2010	XAJacksons found The Old Stone Fort (Virtual Cache)	Texas	Visit Log

We didn't actually find "The Old Stone Fort" today... it's a virtual and I emailed the answer to the question a long time ago and never heard back.  I know I've got the right answer so I'm counting it as "Found" today!  :)  New Found Total:  44!

We deposited our 3 travel bugs from previous caching trips into Tow Mater's Toolbox as prizes for the next FTF's.  Hope they are carried on their way soon!

Baby meets Tow Mater!

This was the awesome spot for our DNF... wish we could have found it, though.  And wish the stinking vultures hadn't been so aggressive... I was worried they were going to try and take the baby away!  We didn't stay here long needless to say.

Yay for at least one find of the day!

This is "Scorpio" - he rode home on the back windshield of TB... and he actually made it all the way!

#Geocaching TODAY!

I am so excited - we are going to get to go geocaching today after several weeks of forced inactivity.  :)  And by forced I just mean we chose to do other things, haha!

The plan:

Drive about an hour from home to replace the cache we own that was destroyed by the rain.  And hit a few other caches along the way.  Woot!  Udpates to follow.

TOW MATER GETS AN UPGRADE:

We have gotten reports of our Tow Mater cache being damaged by rain a few months back.  We have a new upgraded, hopefully more waterproof, container to replace the old one today.  Contents:  New log book (BYOP), THREE Travelbugs picked up in our last cache trips, and a few new goodies for trading.  Tow Mater's Toolbox:  GRAND RE-OPENING!

Too Busy...

We've been insanely busy with "real" life so geocaching was temporarily put on hold.  But as a reward for getting alot of work done today, we are taking the rest of the afternoon to go find a few caches here in town.  Yay!

Our Geocaching Kit

I have officially gotten tired of disorganization in caching - I want to be able to grab our stuff and run out to find a cache whenever we feel like it instead of having to search the house for all the miscellaneous pieces of "equipment."  So, we put together our own little Geocaching Kit.

Our Geocaching Kit is made up of:

1. My old (I'm talking vintage 1986) fanny pack
2. Miscellaneous goodies for trading
3. Scrap paper for taking notes, doing math, etc. (multi- and puzzle-caches)
4. Pens for making notes / signing logs / trading
5. Our own custom-printed log signature labels
6. Flash light for night caching
7. GPS
8. iPhone for cache descriptions and logging field notes

EASTER WEEKEND FINDS

	4/4/2010	Barry's and Bertha's I-20 Travel Bug Hotel	Louisiana	Visit Log
	4/4/2010	Trucks And Travelers Galore #5	Louisiana	Visit Log
	4/3/2010	Back of Beyond	Louisiana	Visit Log
	4/3/2010	109 on the Wall	Louisiana	Visit Log
	4/2/2010	And 1,2,3.	Louisiana	Visit Log
	4/2/2010	North Bossier Park - Life Verse	Louisiana	Visit Log

QR Codes & #Geocaching

What in the world is that thing???

I was only introduced to QR Codes a couple of days ago, but already my mind is running with possibilities.  I'm a graphic designer by education and the marketing possibilities for this little jewels is staggering to thing about!

For now, I'm exploring the options for QR Codes and geocaching.  At present, I've run into several challenges along the journey to create amazingly awesome caches with QR Codes... here they are, outlined for your viewing pleasure and to enable my OCD tendencies:

1. QR Readers on iPhone are not all created equal - Starting this journey in QR Codes was a bit like building a piece of furniture without reading the directions.  I figured out the very basic bits of info (find a code, scan a code, see what it does) and launched!  During my initial excitement about (and total ignorance of) QR Codes, I downloaded the first free QR Reader returned in my App Search results.  When it did NOT work, I got pretty frustrated.  It took me about 8 scanner apps to find a few that worked most of the time.  Here are my recommendations (sorry, these are only for iPhone, unless the designer offers them in other formats, too):  Barcodes (aka ZXing for other phones), QR app, I-Nigma.  QR App has about 75% reliability, but it was still better than most of the others I tried and I liked it simplicity.  Ultimately, I deleted it from my machine though and kept Barcodes as a backup to I-Nigma.  Man, I-Nigma's scan detector is a beast!!!  Why is this important:  Since not all apps are created equal, and not all phones have the same apps, implementing the use of QR Codes in the field could be a bit tricky... how can we be sure their phone and their QR Scanner app will work with our Code?  Not to mention, what if someone gets 2 stages into my multi and doesn't have the capability of scanning the QR Code.
2. QR Readers on iPhone cannot create ready-to-send SMS - It took me hours of frustrating tests of QR Codes created by dozens of generators on the web in all 8 of the scanners I downloaded to finally find one kind soul who included a note in the description of their scanner (not even for an iPhone QR scanner app) that explained that the iPhone OS does not allow for SMS forwarding and, therefore, the message coded into the QR would not be transferred to the SMS screen along with the phone number.  It requires manual entry = LAME!  Now I need to find out how to complain to Apple so this feature will be allowed in the next OS release.  But first I have to figure out what it even means!!!  Anyway, why is this important?  I want to hide a multi-cache and one of the stages brings you to a QR Code that, when scanned, sends a text to a service I use that will in turn send a response text with clues, etc. for the next stage. It won't work if they finder has to enter the exact right bit of text to get his/her clue... wait, maybe it would!!! 
3. Geocaching.com does not send comments (including hashtags) from Field Notes to Twitter - So heres the scenario:  I use Textmarks to send Field Notes to my geocaching.com account.  My geocaching.com account is "forwarded" to my Twitter account.  So everytime I send a FN to my cache account, I get a tweet that reads something like:  "xaashley:  Just found GCXXXX "Fill in the Blank" Cache (link to cache)"  Pretty sweet!  Since I also push my Twitter account to Facebook, that becomes my new status.  Also pretty sweet!  Now for the not-so-sweet part:  Textmarks allows you to include "additional notes" in your FN updates... which are sent beautifully to my cache account.  However, geocaching.com is NOT sending those notes to Twitter.  Why is this important?  Because I want to add the "#geocaching" hashtag to all my Tweets so I can filter them into an RSS feed for this blog!  What does this have to do with QR Codes?  Apparently, nothing, but I discovered this problem while I was exploring QR Codes yesterday so it's stuck in my brain in connection with them... sorry about that!

As (hopefully not IF) we are able to work through these challenges, I'll post solutions here, too.  Although, my main focus at this point is the transferring of comments from my FN to Twitter.  Wish us luck!

GoGeocaching!

Finds From the Past...

	3/29/2010	C-Ya-Later	Texas	Visit Log
	3/29/2010	Bandanna Cache	Texas	Visit Log
	3/29/2010	Axed by Jack	Texas	Visit Log
	2/16/2009	It's All Downhill From Here	Texas	Visit Log
	2/16/2009	Easter Egg Hunt 2008	Texas	Visit Log
	2/15/2009	caching at the Lite	Texas	Visit Log
	2/12/2009	Huntsvillle Guardian	Texas	Visit Log
	2/7/2009	Way To Go Amy Jo!	Texas	Visit Log
	2/7/2009	Tribute to early Huntsville Texas settlers	Texas	Visit Log
	2/7/2009	Facts and Figures	Texas	Visit Log
	8/31/2008	Betty's Pretty in Pink	Texas	Visit Log
	5/13/2008	Academy of Plato	Greece	Visit Log
	5/12/2008	Kokkou Hill - Athens	Greece	Visit Log
	5/7/2008	COLOSSEUM	Lazio	Visit Log
	5/6/2008	Gilligan au Roma	Italy	Visit Log
	5/5/2008	That dont belong here	Italy	Visit Log
	5/5/2008	San Pietro Station Tree	Lazio	Visit Log
	5/2/2008	Florence - A Stairway with a View	Toscana	Visit Log
	6/6/2007	Another LSU Cache	Louisiana	Visit Log
	6/6/2007	Baton Rouge Travel Bug Plaza Hotel	Louisiana	Visit Log
	6/6/2007	No Kidding	Louisiana	Visit Log
	5/13/2007	Big Rock Cache	Louisiana	Visit Log
	5/13/2007	Right field	Louisiana	Visit Log
	5/13/2007	Gettin in shape	Louisiana	Visit Log
	5/13/2007	PB&G	Louisiana	Visit Log
	3/1/2006	Outdoor Learning Center Cache	Louisiana	Visit Log
	3/1/2006	Joyce's Swampwalk	Louisiana	Visit Log
	2/28/2006	Pollard's Package	Louisiana	Visit Log
	2/28/2006	Hamming It Up	Louisiana	Visit Log
	2/28/2006	Billy Goat Gruff	Louisiana	Visit Log
	2/12/2006	Life is Good	Louisiana	Visit Log
	2/11/2006	Old Sailor's Treasure	Louisiana	Visit Log
	8/25/2003	D'Arbonne's Revenge Geocache	Louisiana	Visit Log