Gareth's Place Online!
Geocaching
GSAK Macro
Jan 23rd
GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) is a powerful waypoint management tool for storing, filtering and managing geocaching waypoints.
For the past few months i’ve been holding a database of all the Geocaches in the UK. This requires me to keep renetering pocket queries which each contain the information for upto 500 geocaches.
These are filtered by date placed, and currently there is about 110 different queries requried to cover the whole of the UK. As a premium member it is possible to queue up 40 pocket queries.
With this in mind, I set about a way of speeding up setting up these queries.
Firstly, as there are caches being archived all the time I needed a way to get a complete list of the current caches, this I achieved by making a macro in GSAK as follows:
#*******************************************
# MacVersion = 1.0
# MacDescription = PQ Date Creator
# MacAuthor = Gareth
# MacFileName = PQCreator.gsk
# MacUrl =
#*******************************************
$output=""+$_NewLine
$output=$output+"
MFILTER Expression=not($d_found) and not($d_Archived)
SORT by="placeddate"
$start=$d_PlacedDate
$i=1
$ended=false
While $ended=false
Goto Position=500
$end=$d_PlacedDate
#PAUSE Msg=DateFormat($start)+" - "+DateFormat($end)
MFILTER Expression=$d_PlacedDate>=$start and $d_PlacedDate<=$end and not($d_Found) and not($d_OwnerName="gse1986") and not($d_Archived)
SORT by="placeddate"
If $_FilterCount>500
$end=$end-1
#MsgOK msg="checked if filter"+DateFormat($end)+DateFormat($start)
MFILTER Expression=$d_PlacedDate>=$start and $d_PlacedDate<=$end and not($d_Found) and not($d_OwnerName="gse1986") and not($d_Archived)
SORT by="placeddate"
EndIf
IF $_FilterCount=0
#PAUSE Msg="No waypoints in filter, action cancelled"
endIf
If $i<10
$out="00"+NumToStr($i)
Else
If $i<100
$out="0"+NumToStr($i)
ELSE
$out=NumToStr($i)
EndIf
EndIf
$output=$output+"
$output=$output+"
$output=$output+"
$output=$output+"
$output=$output+"
SET $Data = PutFile($_Install + "\PQ.XML",$output)
$i=$i+1
$start=$end+1
MFILTER Expression=$d_PlacedDate>=$start and not($d_Found) and not($d_OwnerName="gse1986") and not($d_Archived)
SORT by="placeddate"
IF $_FilterCount > 0
ELSE
$ended=true
ENDIF
EndWhile
$output=$output+""+$_NewLine
SET $Data = PutFile($_Install + "\PQ.HTML",$output)
IF Left($Data,7) = "*Error*"
Pause Msg="$Data"
Cancel
ENDIF
More caches!
Oct 29th
Today we spent time in Ambleside and grabbed a few caches there. There is a few older caches and some newer ones, the first one being Ambleside Amble. We weren’t too sure what this would be like given some of the DNFs that were on the cache page. Luckily we had it found within a minute of getting to GZ. We signed the log and moved on, getting some numbers for a multi that we’d part worked out at home. There was 31 places to visit in Ambleside, but given the fact we didn’t have too much time we cheated slightly and managed to narrow it down to two locations to visit – the Market Cross and the Salutation – each opposite each other. When we got to the Salutation there was two possible locations for the cache – one near the Stock Ghyll Cache and one near where we parked – perfect.
We headed off upto stock ghyll and got the cache there and had a quick search to see if we could find the multi cache at the coords we’d worked out. It wasn’t there so moved off to near where we parked and found the cache within a few minutes of searching.
On the way back to the car we grabbed Post Haste Ambleside and drove to Hayes Garden World for lunch. After lunch went on a bit further down the lake and grabbed the new YHA cache, which wasn’t well hidden at all, and also the Galava Fort cache.
This was all for today, so headed off back to Low Briery 
Geocaching in the Lakes
Oct 26th
We’re up in the Lake District for a week so are doing some Geocaching whilst here. Sunday we managed to grab a few in Keswick, which we missed last year. Nothing too much to say about these as they were just micros, although one, Post Haste Keswick GC14E4K did have us searching for a while as the coords brought us to a bridge over a road so we weren’t too sure which level to be looking on!
Today we got some around Whinlatter (A Taste of Lakeland GC14E4K) and then a few near by including GC14E4K where there were some fantastic views!
Finally we tried for another drive by micro, but were too many muggles nearby to attempt. Maybe next time
Geocaching
Mar 5th
We went and found a few caches today – 5 in total and had to DNF one:( We missed FTF but had fun anyway. One cache even had us wading through a river….in March! It was freezing
