I find that geocaching is quite fun and can be done by using your smart phone or gps. It's kind of a world wide scavenger hunt where people hide things in woods, parks, and other public areas and you go and find them with your gps. It costs little money except for gas and gets you out in nature and exploring areas you might not have known about otherwise.
You can find a list of caches in your area here.
People hide small containers in interesting places, post the GPS coordinates online, and you go find what they hid. If you have a smart phone you can download an app for minimal cost and then head off on any manner of adventures. I love hiking caches because I discover new trails and new parks every week.
Have to say it, this isn't an indication of it coming to Android Wear. I'll break it down piece by piece.
>* Android app contains a whole new pokemongoplus project referencing Pokemon GO implementation on Android Wear
Pokemon Go Plus is Niantic/The Pokemon Companies custom Bluetooth wearable. Source (pokemongo.com)
>* The code implementation is marked as complete and release ready
That means absolutely nothing...
>* Android Watch will also use Bluetooth to communicate with your Android Smartphone
* The communication between the smartphone app and your Android watch is encrypted (AES)
* Pokemon GO Plus works in the background – it is not required to keep the smartphone app opened while playing on the watch
Again, all of that means nothing since this is for the Pokemon Go Plus Wearable device.
>* A variety of Android Wear devices smart watches are supported – the code scans for watch characteristics and adapts accordingly
This scans for generic bluetooth devices and figures out their characteristics (step counter, etc). This would detect a capability of the Pokemon Go Wearable and allow only that device.
>Some Android Wear devices work with iOS also. The data mined implementation suggest you’ll be able to use an Android smartwatch and pair it with iOS
Absolutely baseless claim from the article.
Further down in the article they also state
>And yes, you read the code correctly – Niantic’s Pokemon GO Plus framework is called ble!
They have literally zero clue what they are talking about. BLE is a industry standard term for Bluetooth Low Energy, which is what the Pokemon Go Plus device connects using.
TL;DR: Nothing in there is an indication of it coming to Android Wear.
Geocaching. All you need is a GPS or a smartphone. You'll get some exercise and explore new places.
Edit: I forgot to add a link to their website for anyone that's not familiar with Geocaching. http://www.geocaching.com/
Doesn't even necessarily have to be as extravagant as going to Morocco/Egypt, especially for a seven year old (I might wait until he was 10-12 for these more grand adventures). Have you guys explored your surrounding history; national parks, forests, graveyards, monuments? It sounds like he might enjoy the national park angle. Things like camping, hiking, spelunking, climbing, and hey if he "happens" to find some old fossils, arrowheads, pottery, animal bones, along the way that just "happen" to be there more fun all around. Also, probably the most authentic thing like Indiana Jones on a budget, Geocaching. Get him a GPS unit and teach him how to find caches then help him plan and set up caches of his own.
Wow. Thanks for the info! I'll see if I can find a blacklight flashlight of some sort to see if anything else appears. Also, maybe you can check out part one and post it? If so, I can try to complete part one to get the code...
Geocaching is a lot of fun. You use a gps to find things other people have hidden all over the world. It's like a secret scavenger hunt.
Reading the actual geocache posting is even creepier.
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2EB9C_coyote-rest
"Poor Elsie met up with the local carnivores and didn't make it. This cache is dedicated to her.
It's a nice pleasant stroll (albeit very long) out to the cache location. Should be an easy find the way I left it. You knever know if the local fauna will decide to rearrange things though. Enjoy"
The phrasing and sentence structure are very similar. Also the "enjoy" at the end.
Bizarre shit.
IMPORTANT EDIT: it appears this geocache was created in 2010, so it's probably just a coincidence.
Look up Geocaching: http://www.geocaching.com/
Some of the advantages over your original plan are: 1) You get to be part of the team and hunt for the treasure along with your kids. 2) The treasure is already buried by someone else and you don't know what's in it. 3) You get to contribute to the community and add your own treasure for others to find. 4) You can create your own cache and have OTHERS find it if you want.
Why keep it so small when you can make it so BIG!?
Actually I just spent the last 20 minutes reading about Geocaching:
>Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device[2] and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.
>It is a derivation of the outdoor sporting activity of Geotrekking.
>A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek"[by whom?], sharing many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking.
I went on the website http://www.geocaching.com/, did a proximity search and found out there was about 5 hidden caches within a half mile radius of where I live. One in particular I have apparently jogged by at least 50 times without noticing it was hidden a foot away from me. Mind blown. Another one is apparently in the dog park literally next to our building. I might go find them with my girlfriend on our day off. I have a feeling this random adventure game is totally her type of thing.
if it makes you feel any better, i had a cache that lasted literally 4 hours after it went live.
as we all know, one of the rules of GC is discretion. military-grade stealth when hunting for a cache. ESPECIALLY if there are muggles about.
my wife and i placed a rather involved cache under a bridge outside of a military installation. to be clear, this cache was at the end of an almost-never-traveled road, and the part of the military base to which it was somewhat near is a field with literally nothing going on. and the cache was placed several hundred yards from the fence line. having worked on this installation for well over a decade, i knew that this location was perfect.
someone was mowing the field outside the fence near the bridge. and by "mowing," i mean he was a very good distance away from the bridge. he just happened to see some kids rustling about near and under it. he drove his mower over to the area, asked the kids what was going on, and they told him, in his words, "mind your own business. this doesn't concern you." rather than taking the time to explain what they're doing and what geocaching is, they got into a rather heated discussion with the guy, who ended up calling 911.
the bomb squad came out and "diffused" my cache. glow sticks, little trinkets, waterproof notebook and pen ... all gone. they figured it was a cache, but they had to be sure, so they took it.
i know all of this because i worked very closely with local law enforcement and the bomb squad. they told me that i wasn't in any danger of legal retribution, but they also said that whoever the kids were need a swift kick to the asphalt for being such jerks.
you can read the comments here. i wasn't gentle, and i wasn't kind.
Looks like it can auto-catch Pokemon, but only if you've caught one of that type before:
>Once a Pokémon is close, press the button on the Pokémon GO Plus to throw a Poké Ball. You'll only be able to throw a Poké Ball using Pokémon GO Plus if you've caught the Pokémon before. The Pokémon GO Plus will flash and vibrate to let you know if you were successful in catching the Pokémon.
Here's a list of a few things I do, some being straight up free, others requiring a start-up cost:
I win!
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC15FF_pingy-head-south-central-flas-1st-geocache
To be fair ive never been to that cache, but it was a scavenger hunt of a different type.
I looked at what you've posted on Reddit and didn't find any clues.
However your proposal video (which was awesome BTW) was posted on an external site that lists your real name and Youtube username, since your Reddit username is unique, most users use the same username across services and your Youtube name is the same as your GC name, looked at your recent finds, filtered by large, two ammo cans mentioned, looked through photo logs and spotted the 30A sticker. Thanks for the hunt, of a different type.
Hecla is a mountain, the summit of which is here
There's no active cache listing within 10 miles (I also checked other listing sites, again, nothing).
So it doesn't look likely that it's a geocache unless it's an old archived one (but then it probably wouldn't be in pristine condition, they do tend to let in some water eventually). You can often find archived geocaches with careful Googling but a drew a blank on that one too.
Invading from the Ingress crowd. Hello fellow xkcd fans.
Basically, Ingress is exactly as he put it in the alt-text: "Foursquare with Space Noises." It's owned by Google, so naturally, it's Android-only for the time being. In a nutshell, it's an augmented reality, location-based, international game of green-versus-blue capture-the-flag.
It's in closed beta at the moment, but you're able to request an invite for it on the official website. You can also try to impress the developers on Google+ and Facebook with fanart (which doesn't even have to be relevant to the plot, it just has to be nice and shiny) and earn a code that way.
There's also an alternate-reality game going on simultaneously on The Niantic Project website that gets you in-game goodies and reveals the story about the game.
And yes, in the game, there are space noises.
Seems to mostly be an American suburb or rural thing. Many who play in urban areas can and do play on foot/bicycle. But in most of the suburbs (and almost all of the rural areas), the portal density just isn't high enough to effectively play without using a vehicle.
For instance, the town of Finleyville is about 15 miles south of the center of Pittsburgh, and you have only three portals you can play via walking. That's one whole field. There's a 4th portal about a mile away if you head east.
So, if you live in Finleyville (or any of the thousands of towns like this), and want to play, you pretty much need a vehicle.
That's not what the Plus is though (well, at least based on what's been said so far?). It's basically just a Bluetooth device that allows you to do a few limited actions without needing to pull your phone out. http://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/pokemon-go-plus/
"This cache has been hidden by the High squadron of the scout group Lawn 1, which has its headquarters in the parish of S. Paul to Stagnana."
Someone else on a geocaching site found that item (or a similar one) and that is their info from it, translated from Italian to English.
Have you thought about geocaching? It's a "real world treasure hunt," which sounds pretty damn interesting. Not to mention, it's a really cool way to get you to explore your city/surrounding areas plus you pick up a few treasures along the way. The website: http://www.geocaching.com/
Look at how many days the portal has been active and find out what date it relates to. Then head to Google's location history page, sign in, and find the entry for that date, which will tell you where you went that day. With that and the intel map, you'll be able to jog your memory pretty easily.
>Why would a cache go so far out of its way to be conspicuous?
As duncast said, I have found plenty that aren't hidden in any way, but are puzzles.
I'm willing to bet this is a geocache as well, as I've seen one nearly identical to this.
There is most likely water in those jugs, and you use them to fill up the pvc pipe, which contains a waterproof geocache that floats when the water is added.
OP if your friend can look up the spot on google maps, they can find the longitude and latitude and look it up on http://www.geocaching.com/ to see if it's listed. It may be a "premium" geocache which requires a subscription, but it's worth a try.
I found one less complicated, but it looks pretty similar.
Hey! I'm in the same boat, but recently I've started geocaching. It might seem somewhat silly and childish at first, but I really recommend it! I've been out more in the last week since I started than in the last two months combined!
geocaching.com and /r/geocaching for more info!
Okay. You ready for this shit?
Seriously, it is such an awesome daytime date idea. Here's why: 1) It is a mildly physical activity, always good for a date. 2) It involves a lot of walking, giving you both the benefit of conversation and the memory of having visited a lot of locations with you. 3) Searching for stuff and finding it is super exciting. Its like being a pirate. 4) Geocaches are often hidden in trees. Which means you get to lift her up to take a look. 5) Finally, when you find the cache, you get to sign your names in the little log inside. Which is a cool "us moment" opportunity.
I recommend talking to a few friends who already geocache so you can make sure your trip includes a few "sure finds." Basically caches you already know the exact location of so you can search around for a bit then point her in the right direction so she finds it.
Get in touch with your local same-faction players they can help you a lot.
Learn to use the Intel map at http://www.ingress.com/Intel to find areas with a lot of portals, especially a lot of portals that change hands frequently so you can easily capture grays, and fill out and link into triangles the ones of your color.
Until you have levelled up a bit your bursters (xmp) won't be strong enough to really damage shielded portals.
Try going to a dense area and just linking every portal to it's closest neighbors.
Learn to glyph (the connect-the-dots option on the hack button), it gets you AP, more gear, and progress towards a badge.
>Agents, Your Ingress Scanner will soon be updated to version 1.122.0. The following changes have been detected:
>- Preperations for re-enabling Portal Submissions. - Magnus Reawakens anomaly series updates. - Additional classified modifications to Scanner codebase.
>Checkout upcoming Ingress events at http://www.ingress.com/events.
>Join the investigation to uncover the truth behind the portals at http://investigate.ingress.com.
its a mobile game where to play you have to physically move to different streets. means that you can get several players converging on particularly valuable locations.
(in fact its a rebadged version of an existing game, Ingress )
Ingress article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/04/ingress-the-game-that-reveals-googles-secret-war-to-control-london
Globally? Doesn't make a lick of difference.
Locally, you might want to look at how things are around your area, via http://www.ingress.com/intel. I suggest playing for the team that isn't doing so well, portals-captured-wise. (This allows faster leveling via 100 AP per hack on an enemy portal)
I chose Enlightened this way (and also partially because I like green better than blue!)
I'm not sure it's a trackable; It seems like another cacher's personal tag, something they leave to show they've been there.
Edit: Yet there's this one that's apparently a GC?
First, I would start here:
http://www.geocaching.com/guide/default.aspx
Spend a good half-hour browsing through all the links under the video.
A muggle is someone who is NOT geocaching. Basically, say you're looking for a cache and it's hidden under the skirt of a light post or something like that. The light post it's on is on the corner of a shopping mall parking lot. In this case a muggle would be all the people in the parking lot who are there to shop. You do not want them to see you lifting up the skirt of the lightpole to get the cache because they may come check to see what you were doing, find the cache, not care and then leave it a mess/unhidden/steal it.
Geocoins are mentioned in the link under "What are trackables?". If you find a geocoin, or TB (travelbug), it's basically a coin or some other item (usually a small toy/stuffed animal/figurine, but not always) with a number on it. You go to geocaching.com and when you sign the log on the website you can also type in the number to the associated coin/TB and it will update the page for the trackable to show that you have it and when you drop it off at another cache you will update that same web page (within geocaching.com account) so it's progress can be updated.
Many times, trackable items, especially TBs, have a small message attached to them that says what their specific goal is. Some of them want to make it to every continent, or every US state, or I had one that requested to be kept within a certain distances of airports/hotels or things like that. That way you can hold on to it until you're at the best cache to leave it in accordance with it's goal.
Hope that helped!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=9567451e-a1b8-42aa-9fba-90ac20e5b96f
Someone created a replica of the Arc of the Covenant and placed it in a cave. Still my favorite cache. And this is me with it- http://img.geocaching.com/cache/log/323a6cad-2ae9-4a8f-8d79-536b5175c3a6.jpg
The whole point of the game is to get people to explore their town and outlying areas. If you're that hesitant to leave your house, then this game probably isn't for you.
But my suggestion would be to at least try it. Spend an hour or two hitting up a few nearby portals. Dunno if you have a car or not, but if your closest portals are somewhat spread out, most people prefer bicycling over walking. It helps to go on ingress.com/intel first to plan out a route. Any high level enemy portals are only good for hacking, as you won't make a dent if you attack them. As a noob, look for unclaimed portals that are white that you can capture. Also, a great way to get a lot of points easily when first starting out is to look at the map for portals your team already owns that just need to be linked together.
But if after a few hours, if you still don't like it, then go back home and never come out again. :P
Everyone has told you WHAT it is, but few folks have told you WHY its there.
I cannot be certain, but I have seen one of those stuck to a palm tree down in Anaheim, CA. It contained a GeoCache.
GeoCaching is a game where you use a GPS unit to find things hidden about. Read more here: http://www.geocaching.com/
Also worth noting that the official app description does state you need a minimum of 2GB to play so if you're trying to play with 1GB and getting frustrated, by all means try the OP's suggestion but be aware that you're technically playing on a device that does not meet the software publisher's specifications.
edit - source -
http://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/explore/
"Android:
Compatible with Android devices that have 2 GB RAM or more and have Android Ver. 4.4–6.0 installed.
Not compatible with Android devices that use Intel Atom processors. Compatibility with tablet devices is not guaranteed. Application may not run on certain devices even if they have compatible OS versions installed."
I own a geocache and I love reading the comments of people trying to get to it without getting "spotted" in the log book.
Here it is for anyone interested.
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC4103T_happy-birthday?guid=dc8c358f-e2fc-4009-9f76-2ee915f45eb3
EDIT: forgot four words.
There is, as a matter of fact. It's a part of the Headquarters Geotrail, a Geotrail within walking distance of the Geocaching HQ. They even have a little passport for the trail. As someone who lives in an area with many nanos, this tour was great as it was everything except nanos, and this one was no exception.
I truly look forward to the day you love yourself without any drugs at all, the day you take in nature and are happy to be outside and at peace. You can then remember what path you should be on and what kinds of people you should have around you. You need to avoid everybody around you who uses these drugs and find people who use other things - like games, cars, traveling, cooking, whatever. There's a game, Ingress you can put on your phone which is excellent for getting you out the house and clearing your mind of EVERYTHING.
Either that or you're the best law enforcement officer actor ever trying to make the users here show their colors with your click bait and drama - sure know how to make them fingers fly, detective.
Early grind?
You haven't seen "grind" yet. The doubling-AP-each-level standard gets pretty painful.
Check the Intel map in your area (http://www.ingress.com/intel) and just scout it for parks, busy parts of town, etc where there's a lot of portals, and you can use the level drop-downs to locate clusters of low-level portals. Go for those, and in the meantime, glyph hack portals--particularly enemy portals because of the huge bonus--and you should be level 4/5 pretty quickly.
By design you can not use it to scout for unclaimed portals easily.
In addition to the other advice being offered, I'll suggest using the Intel Map to find areas of weak or unclaimed portals. You will have to zoom way in to find unclaimed portals, but it beats aimlessly wandering around your city/town.
She spent all of 20 minutes searching. Some old timers will be cursing that little factoid.
Luck or something else, her find looks to be about 0.75 times as tall as an Arkansas State Quarter Dollar, which appropriately enough features a cut diamond emblem.
Suomi Tour on aika kiva sivusto, jos haluaa etsiä paikallisia outouksia.
Toinen idea: tee itsellesi tunnus geocaching.comiin ja etsi geokätköjen avulla paikkoja, joihin et muuten sattuisi vahingossakaan.
Here is the original discussion, in which I asked /r/geocaching to help me decide how to word my cache. The essence of it is: it's a multi-cache that requires two players to go to two separate locations at the same time, in order to collectively determine the location of the final cache. One player going to one waypoint and then the other won't work, thanks to some sorcery and stuff.
If anybody's in the Oxford, UK area, the cache just went live today as GC591VV - You Can't Do It Alone!
I found a girl floating face down in lake Ontario when I was caching, called 911 and the police boat scooped her up about 5 minutes later.
I was from out of town so I emailed the police a few days later when I got home and they said she survived.
Log: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=25799179-e7f1-443b-83c5-1ff76a34945b
You're thinking of the archived multi cache Baby Talk. It was a llama, not a horse or cow, and the llama's collar had the coordinates to the final on it. Apparently the llama stopped coming over to people who called for it and the cache had to be archived (if I remember correctly).
Yep... had one the other day close to a guard rail. A very nice man, on his way home I assume, stopped and asked “Are you okay buddy, do you need me to get help?” To which I replied “I appreciate it, but no thank you. I’m just geocaching”
Quizzical 🤨 look ensues. Drives off slowly, and bewildered.
For good measure, here’s the geocache referenced
Although it is annoying, that's a minority. Just happened in a sequence! People after them had better logs.
I like the idea behind the cache (in honor of volunteer firefighters) but to be honest from a foreigner's perspective it's a fairly typical cache (ammo can in a stump in the woods.) Maybe there's a nice view or the trail is great, I don't know, but 345 finds and 1 favorite point suggest otherwise. The quality of a cache is proportional with the quality of the log, for the most part.
As someone whom spends a alot of time in the bush in and around the lower mainland I shudder at the thought of opening up all the old FSRs.
If you have ever been out behind Mission on the Lost Creek FSR or along Stave and Devils Lake on Burma Street/Florence Lake Road you would understand my fears. Just one group recently pulled 70, 000 lbs of garbage from the east side of Stave Lake and I know of several other groups including the district of Chilliwack that pulled similar amounts from the west side.
As nice as it would be to drive to your destination rather than hike in, it simply allows really uncaring and thoughtless folks to seriously damage the land cost us all money in clean up and remediation.
Oh, I see! You are going a little "old skool" with this, and you tell each other, to make a little expectation.
What to do on a date
You can find some hidden gems on campus by geocaching. At least you'll go on an adventure and may run into something you didn't know existed before.
If they tag along and find the cache with you they most definitely can log it in the logbook and online. For online just use this link and change out the GC code http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?WP=GCXXXX
Other than what's been mentioned, you can go rock-climbing at UNB, or Kayaking (you might have to leave Fredericton for that though).
UNB (and many other people/places) offers cooking classes, music lessons, art classes, etc. (I'd recommend checking Kijiji.ca for class info).
Indoor swimming at the Nashwaaksis school.
I believe the YMCA (or any gym really), always has certain activities happening like yoga classes, zumba, karate, tai chi, etc.
There's a skateboarding park (although small) on Kimble Drive.
Downtown you could visit Clay Cafe, Science East, museums, art galleries, the Playhouse.
EDIT: I'll just keep posting as I think of more.
The official page says it: "You'll only be able to throw a Poké Ball using Pokémon GO Plus if you've caught the Pokémon before". From http://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/pokemon-go-plus/. So you can only learn there's a pokemon, but you'll need the phone to catch it.
No reason is given. I suspect that's because to catch a new pokemon you should actually "battle" with it by doing a good launch.
> This is really fishy. I'm not a developer, but I'm sure they had to shift some in-game code for the prototype and for their device too. Niantic won't be pleased.
Perhaps it's emulating the Pokémon Go Plus?
I see a fairly good number of cache around your town that you can get started with. You might also want to consider going to this event in Heerlen on 17 July to get to know other players in the area and possibly find a mentor.
FYI: We made a hide and seek geocache with lots of boxes in there where one of the boxes had the log, it was completely trashed and left like that, the geocache url (it's in dutch)
found it! bullfrog pond geocache
But no one mentions the silver dollar in the log. Anyway, thanks for telling me about the site. I'm gonna write a little entry in the log.
If you're thinking about adventuring ...perhaps you ought to check out Geocaching.com? Lots of adventures there and you can keep things about as lo-tech or hi-tech as you want.
Not sure if I got you right but according the guidlines geocaches have to include a logsheet or logbook.
Looking at that guy's logs, it seems like he only did this on his first cache. No other caches have the same problem. Still really confused by it all.
Haven't seen it mentioned yet but geocachings my personal favorite. Most people already have a smartphone or simple GPS handy and from there it's all free. Just the cost of walking/driving to different locations.
Granted if you want to really get into and try some of the harder puzzle caches that need more accurate results or if you want to hide your own caches it's best to invest in a more precise GPS but you can usually grab a nice one off ebay when someone upgrades or craigslist for around $100, and that's usually a one time investment if you take care of your equipment.
I guess you could also factor in membership costs if you chose to pay for a few extra features that I really don't see the point of if you don't mind investing a bit more time.
Where I live there's a portal called "Pott im Vorgarten" - literally just a small clay pot in some guy's frontyard.
Edit: Intel link with photo.
The game is Ingress (http://www.ingress.com/). It's produced by Niantic, which is a small group of developers within Google.
Atm it's an Android only game, but there is very confident speculation that there will be an iPhone client very soon. A couple of the main reasons for that is the interface has been getting smaller recently (to fit on an iphone) and there is talk of a 3rd faction ingame (currently two factions)
There was an event today (known as an anomaly). These events happen at various locations around the world a couple times a year over the span of a couple weeks. The result of the events generally sway the "story" of the game as well. Today's event was the ~~first~~ second time Australia got to be the site of an anomaly (brisbane and melbourne)
Outside the times of an anomaly, it's just general gameplay battling the other faction for control. One of the cool things of this game is that it relies on real world points of interest. And these POIs exist all over the world, in game. When travelling overseas I've been able to play this game using POIs from wherever I may be at the time (china, malaysia, japan, fiji, hawaii and australia so far)
If you live in Melbourne and do start playing this game, I suggest joining the Enlightened (green) faction (because that's me and I'm biased :P) but also because the Resistance (blue faction) have slightly greater numbers in the Melbourne region, which lends them to having a slightly easier time than the other faction in general.
Also today's anomaly event was won overall by Enlightened (green)
Deploying on neutral portals and creating control fields is the way to level.
action | AP yield |
---|---|
Deploying 8 resonators on neutral portal | 1750 |
Creating control field | 1250 |
Creating a link | 313 |
Use the intel map to find neutral portals. You need to be at zoom level 17 on the intel map to see neutral portals. If you don't know how to get to zoom level 17, then zoom all the way out to planetary view and click the "zoom in" button 16 times OR zoom all the way in and click the "zoom out" button 4 times. I've been having trouble with the "zoom out" button, though. You can also go the the area of the map you want to check, click "link" button in the top-right to get the permanent link, copy-paste that into your address bar, then change the "z=" value to "z=17". This will get you at the most zoomed out neutral portal viewing zoom level.
That HAS to be good for me.
If either of you have a smartphone, and like being outdoors, you could consider geocaching.
Geocaching can be defined as using multi-billion-dollar satellites to find tupperware in the woods.
There's lots nearby.
Check out the /r/geocaching subreddit too.
1100 caches in a day? Is that even possible? Assuming you cached for 24 hours straight, that would average 78.5 seconds per geocache. Each cache has to be 0.1 miles apart, right?
I guess it's possible on a car or bicycle if you're literally sprinting, jumping out, finding the cache immediately, and going to the next one.
EDIT: Is this you? http://www.geocaching.com/blog/2010/11/24-hour-epic-adventure-nets-more-than-a-1100-geocaches/ Apparently this is a real thing!?
If you're a Premium Member, sorting by # of Favorite Points will be a good guide.
Otherwise, here's a couple of my faves
I'd like to make a recommendation for you before you start doing any hides. Admittedly, you've looked primarily in one general area of town, and thus haven't seen a wide variety of caches. Before you hide one, go check out some of the real winners in town. Go to http://www.geocaching.com/seek/ and enter the name of your town, or your home coordinates, to get a page listing the caches closest to you (not a map). Then click on the header at the top of the 2nd column, the one that looks like a blue ribbon. This will order the caches nearest you by Favourite Points. Premium members can assign fav points to caches they really like, and I find it's a good way to learn which caches in an area are really worth finding. Go find some of those to really get inspired about creative ways to cache.
We have a general rule of thumb in my hometown for caching: it's best to log 100 finds before doing your first hide. Now that's not to try to discourage new hiders. That's so that you have a chance to see which caches are really great and get inspired, as well as see which ones don't work so well (containers that leak, uninspiring locations, etc.).
I'm happy to hear you're enjoying this great hobby. Definitely go find some of the really great caches in your area and use those good examples to make similarly inspired hides. Have fun!
Geocaching! It's really good fun, and it's a surprisingly big community. It gets you out and about and there are some really inventive places for people to hide stuff.
Edit: That was a bit vague, sorry.
Basically people all over the world hide little (or large) containers containing at least a little notepad which you write your name in when you find it, and also sometimes small items which you can swap things of your own with. You register online and are then given the exact coordinates of where these containers are, and there are so so many that there is bound to be a few within a mile of where you live. They're often hid in really inventive places like under roots or in hollow rocks with cryptic clues, so it can be quite a challenge.
There are apps for it, a subreddit for it, and a really big community. Here is the website for it, I highly recommend it if you like a large scale hide and seek.
Geocaching! It is a ton of fun. You can put as much or as little effort into it as you'd like. Some geocaches don't require any more effort than pulling a magnet off the back of a roadside guardrail and some are so elaborate you have to kayak to them.
Groundspeak has downloads of printable brochures to help explain geocaching to the genral public, as well as specialised information designed for law enforcement personel.
I carry a copy of the first one in my geocaching pouch, and have a copy of the law enforcement one in the car.
Thanks for the heads up. Found it! However membership is required to view it, and I don't want to buy the answer...
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC2P5PR
If it comes to that I will to please the Redditors, but I'll give it a go cracking it myself first...
I heard you were looking for some hidden gems
Edit: GPS not required. My friends and I used to use google map printouts to find these!
Geocaching its a great way to explore the city, very easy to get into and its pretty fun. Can do it with an iphone/android or a cheap gps (a decent cheap one is like 50-100 on amazon.)
> thanks for ruining the game by forcing all these security measures
Except that these security measures such as preventing rooted phones were implented to stop cheaters. (It didn't)
> trying to go against Niantic's vision.
And what is that vision exactly? Is it this one? Where they basically tell you which direction to go in? Just like a tracker?
Before you argue "hurr durr its a trailer of course it wont be 100% true" then why does the webpage explicitly state that you can determine the location of nearby Pokemon? The specific quote is "Use it to find PokéStops, Gyms, the location of nearby Pokémon, and more!"
>If you dont like the game: stop playing it, stop talking about it, move on.
Who said that they don't like the game? Everyone is saying that they don't like what Niantic is doing to the game.
> I love the game without trackers, so boring to B-line to every pokemon you want.
Good for you. Thing is, not everyone uses trackers 24/7. In fact, the majority of people probably only use them to track down the elusive Snorlax or Dragonite they saw in their sightings.
I feel the state of the app is as intended. this way there is a lot more reason for consumers to pick up the Pokemon Go Plus accessory that basically allows to have it run in the background.
I got to swim with a whale shark! +1 Life Achievement.
Also, I've started playing Ingress, Google's GPS game. Its a heap of fun and I'm using a way to get out a see places I wouldn't normally know was there and to be more active and improve my cardio.
Yeah, Im going to second Berlin. http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=52.511624,13.430262&z=11
I would imagine many European and middle eastern cities have significantly higher density due to the much longer history in them.
This is one of the main sites, Geocaching.com, but there are many. The sites are free. Often the mobile app must be purchased for full access. Someone hides a cache, could be any size, though containers that can container some sort of log book are the most popular. Then you post the coordinates of said cache on a website. Use anything with a GPS to find it! Many are themed, or have something to do with the location. They are hidden with varying levels of difficulty. Other people can use apps or look up on their computer ahead of a trip and research what caches are in their area. You then go on a treasure hunt for it! You then record having found it, either in a log/scroll at the cache itself or through the website/app. I love it! Well worth the money for the app and a fun way to liven up trips or ways to discover new areas.
Well, we don't know yet, it seems to be starting off reallly slowly, some people are comparing it to something called "Kröflueldar" which was a 9 year volcanic eruption in Iceland.
Do you have a smartphone? You can start with the free geocaching app and just search for caches near you. Or go here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/
And here's a starter guide: http://www.geocaching.com/guide/
How about Geocaching? There's tons around town that don't involve hiking in the crazy summer heat, and you might find areas/art/history that you never knew existed in town!
Scavenger hunt basically. Use GPS coordinates to find a hidden 'cache'. some are easy, some are insanely difficult and hidden. GPS gets you to within 5-7m (?).
As a geocacher, I see the demand and potential viral spread of this app once it launches. I heard about geocaching from a friend who heard of it from a friend and so on... turns out there is a huge worldwide phenomena of 6 million people that do this as a hobby (http://www.geocaching.com/). For this reason, I was excited by the CoinPlant app and see this as gaining some attention from a younger generation of teens and gamers, interested in a new generation of augmented reality gaming (outside! with wearable tech). I like where this is heading and there is nothing funner than the thrill of a treasure hunt.
If you are all crafty, try making blankets/clothing for the needy, or anything like that. Lots of people knit caps and mittens for premies, or bigger ones for the homeless, as well as blankets. It'll take a chunk of time to do, you'll feel great for having finished something AND for having helped someone out.
Also, since you travel, how about Geocaching?
I tried Pokemon Go today and while I like the general idea, I think there are too many annoyances for me to continue playing.
As is, it's really not well suited to be combined with running:
it lures you into crowded places I'd wish to avoid
you basically have to have your display unlocked all the time
the collection system doesn't seem that rewarding to me
it constantly interrupts your background music even if you disable all in game sounds
the density of pokemon is too high to use it for interval training but - at least on the countryside - too low to occupy yourself with it.
the throwing mechanic for pokeballs seems entirely pointless, at least at my low level. Either make it much more challenging or otherwise allow me just to tap a pokemon while running.
I think most of these issues would be resolved if I would buy the Pokémon GO Plus accessory but that won't happen, unless the software itself gets improved.
So, after walking around for 2 hours playing Pokemon Go, I decided to ditch it and go for an honest 5.5km run. Next I might give Zombies, Run! a try.
I would kill for a PokeWalker v2 type of thing. Literally just re-release the old PokeWalkers, but have them Bluetooth based instead of IR based. Charge like $20 a pop and let it record the data for things like eggs. This would be much cheaper than a fitbit (iirc they're like $100+), and much more reasonable as an add-on. Either way, I do feel like they need to figure something out with how the tracking works, because as it is right now, it kills phones like crazy.
EDIT: Wow they're already on it, though it doesn't mention anything about egg hatching or things like that. I need one, lol.
I recommend getting in touch with your local Enlightened community. They can help you with your questions, and you can share the fun of ingress together.
To see portals on map: http://www.ingress.com/intel
Do you know, that you can look up your area on http://www.ingress.com/intel ? There you can find areas where you can do something. Find the areas the are battled constantly so that they are not fully build up.
Use the Intel Map. Zoom way in and look for unclaimed or low level portals. (Yes, they exist.) Go there. Attack, deploy, link, and field. You'll level up mighty quick. But you will need to make an effort. We've all been there. You can do it too.
Yeah. And identification of duplicates and "uninteresting" portal sites should count too. Both adds and subtracts are attempting to improve the quality of the game.
I don't know if this is typical in other regions, but in my region every crap corporate art installation, and quite a few art projects made by a student of welding, is a portal, and I'm not sure that was the intent of the game. "Mazatlan Fountain", I'm looking at you.
Not to mention portals that are just barely not duplicative of each other. There should be a minimum distance unless it's really warranted. Having a portal on some piece of art + again on the readerboard describing that art is pretty suspect. Basically I'd say if two portals are within resonator/mod range of each other they should probably be considered the same thing.
In realtà per passione dei miei, che sin da piccolo mi portavano su per i bricchi. Da bambino andavo molto spesso con l'alpinismo giovanile del CAI. Poi (al di fuori del CAI, beninteso) ho avuto la fortuna di trovare degli amici a cui faceva piacere fare qualche giorno in cammino fuori, una cosa tira l'altra, ho cominciato a fare qualche giro in più, anche per conto mio.
Ti dirò una cosa che negli ultimi mi stimola molto a uscire di casa, che forse ti può interessare, è il geocaching, non so se tu ne abbia mai sentito parlare. Ci sono queste scatolette in giro per il mondo, nascoste in posti più o meno di passaggio. Hai le loro coordinate GPS e devi metterti a cercarle con i pochi indizi che hai, poi ci sono infinite variazioni sul tema. L'idea di base è: esci per trovare le scatolette, e ti ritrovi in posti molto fighi, che non conoscevi. Io di solito mollo la macchina in qualche posto, mi faccio un'oretta - un'oretta e mezza di geocaccia a piedi e poi torno a casa. Ho conosciuto tanti posti nuovi in cui adesso torno abitualmente.
Io ho la fortuna di abitare in una zona meravigliosa, industrializzata sì ma con molto verde e posti spettacolari, mi ci vorrebbe una vita solo per conoscerla bene. Sono convinto che spesso i posti belli sono ad un passo da noi e non li conosciamo, e penso che sia il caso anche per te :)
Hi! This is a cache from Team Gently! Thanks for posting! I hope you enjoyed finding it! I'd recommend any of our caches, but our best one is probably Impregnable which has kindly been adopted by another cacher. EDIT: a word
We only did two caches, but they were both cave caches. Very tight squeezes that required a lot of maneuvering on my belly and squeezing through some small spaces.
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5DNKM_down-the-hatch?guid=0978f680-56d8-4ad7-ad68-75bd00e44b8c
The first one was a fairly short crawl, but still took about forty-five minutes to get to the cache and back out. It was so tight I had to back up in a couple of spots and scoop out some rocks so I could squeeze through.
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5B2WM_cave-cricket?guid=c5ab55c4-5f63-4a7b-a4d5-abd3aafc0f0b
The second one was a lot longer, but I was able to hunch down and walk a good portion of the way. The tight areas in this cave were extremely small and I had a tough time getting through.
These were a couple of very cool caches that took me quite a ways out of my comfort zone. The things we do to gain a smiley !!
Great tale you have told. :)
I tried to have a story like that myself. I had a TB circumnavigate the world and come back to the States. I was in Seattle a week after it was but I caught the owner just too late to try to get him to hold on to it and get it back to me.
I thought it would be neat to have a bug go around the world and then come back to me, haha.
Here's a link though if anyone cares. Point of note is thay the TB has now been to TWO annual geocaching block parties in Seattle (2012 and 2015). I have been to zero geocaching events :(
No problem! Hope you have fun on your caches. There's a whole website dedicated to it, you can join and search for caches in your area and log which ones you've done, and even create your own! I like to geocache the most when I travel because I get to explore bits of new places that one normally wouldn't see.
You will find interesting things in your area that you didn't even know about because you never had a reason to go there. You'll get exercise and feel adventurous.
When starting out, make an account and then use the map at http://www.geocaching.com to find an area on the map that looks interesting (perhaps something near water or another landmark). Plot out an area you'd like to go, and then use the app (c:geo for Android or the official Groundspeak app for iPhone) to find the caches.
The reason I suggest this is that there's a lot of "park and grab" caches that are quick and easy to find, but not always interesting. If you get into caching after finding some interesting spots, you can use these park and grabs later on to get some quick finds in your area to run up your numbers, if you ever find yourself caring about numbers (I don't, I try to stick to interesting areas).