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Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 9:02 pm
by Mr.Yuck
KnowsOpie wrote:
I was waiting to find out before I bought it for my Kindal. :D Darn good price there for a good read. ;)
Yep, TheMulcher from Charlotte, although he didn't enter as that. But TH knew who he was. The Author put in that "comment on the post to win" thing in, we don't normally do that. Plus it made our low entry count public. Trust me when I tell you that was the lowest number of entries ever for a contest here. Let me address a couple of things here.

Yes, we have pretty much 4 active members in the forums. A few people slip in here and there, but 4 active right now. Have I not said forums are practically dead? Munzee killed theirs after about 2 years, and they were actually pretty active. As far as the Froggie site, I just looked, and they have a little under a Million members. You only become a member of the forums there if you visit them, and use your username and password to log in. So that means about 6% of their registered members have ever even LOOKED at their forums. :mrgreen:

Oh, since this is the Benchmark cache type thread, I will hereby publicly announce we have decided to launch the new type in conjunction with the new OCPL code, which we are trying to get help from Europeans to implement ASAP. And even if they started tomorrow, I'm sure it would take a few weeks, at least. There is still stuff broken (like the 2nd page of searches, most zip code searches, etc), and we have two long time users who can't seem to log in for the life of them. I would suggest not logging out, by the way. Even though my kid cleared my browser history on me over the weekend, and I got back in no problemo. :D

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 10:33 am
by KnowsOpie
I follow some of the other OpenCaching platform forums as well, but never post there. I'm guessing most people use Facebook geocaching groups to communicate?

I believe in offering quality caches to attract interest, and I think these new BM listings are of interest to the average geocacher, but of no interest to avid Benchmarkers. I say that because I feel that true Benchmarkers are way too formal for me. ;) Their forums on GS are just as inactive as the one here, maybe 3 forum regulars there.

My BM caches here are just any other Virtual with the POI being a Benchmark. I'm trying to limit them to ones that I find interesting and have visited, not everything in the NGS data base. :D

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:37 pm
by Mr.Yuck
In the last 30 days, 75 different people from 20 States and 2 Provinces have visited this forum 400 times. Gotta love Google Analytics. As lame as those statistics are. The website itself? Generally around 90 different people a day, which is pretty average for winter months.

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 5:48 pm
by Bon Echo
Okay I thought you were kidding about painted rocks except now it's coming up in some facebook groups I'm a member of - camping related groups. And now there are FB groups dedicated to this: "Here's two Facebook groups, RVing Rocks, and Rock the Parks. For the painting rocks. Paint then, hide them, keep them, post pics of them.."

This was posted before that one:
"Morning all, I know some of you geocash when camping, and it is fun. I just saw on another page where people paint rocks and hide them for other campers, I think this is a cute fun activity especially families with kids. They get bored sometimes. I would love to see this happen in this group. I'm going to ask my kids their in college but they love this stuff. I'm thinking painting a pic of popups or just PUCO for our group. I'm going camping this weekend. When I get home I'll post what campground and how many rocks we hide and kinda the vicinity. If no one ever finds them we can look next time we're there. Enjoy all, have a great day! "

Power trail, here I come :)
EDIT: actually should paint some up that say "for more fun, try Opencaching" with a link to OCNA. Hmm, not a bad idea.....

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:54 am
by KnowsOpie
Bon Echo wrote:Okay I thought you were kidding about painted rocks except now it's coming up in some facebook groups I'm a member of - camping related groups. And now there are FB groups dedicated to this: "Here's two Facebook groups, RVing Rocks, and Rock the Parks. For the painting rocks. Paint then, hide them, keep them, post pics of them.."

This was posted before that one:
"Morning all, I know some of you geocash when camping, and it is fun. I just saw on another page where people paint rocks and hide them for other campers, I think this is a cute fun activity especially families with kids. They get bored sometimes. I would love to see this happen in this group. I'm going to ask my kids their in college but they love this stuff. I'm thinking painting a pic of popups or just PUCO for our group. I'm going camping this weekend. When I get home I'll post what campground and how many rocks we hide and kinda the vicinity. If no one ever finds them we can look next time we're there. Enjoy all, have a great day! "

Power trail, here I come :)
EDIT: actually should paint some up that say "for more fun, try Opencaching" with a link to OCNA. Hmm, not a bad idea.....
I've been leaving painted rock starter kits as swag lately. :mrgreen:

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 11:12 am
by Mr.Yuck
Bon Echo wrote:Okay I thought you were kidding about painted rocks except now it's coming up in some facebook groups I'm a member of - camping related groups. And now there are FB groups dedicated to this: "Here's two Facebook groups, RVing Rocks, and Rock the Parks. For the painting rocks. Paint then, hide them, keep them, post pics of them.."

This was posted before that one:
"Morning all, I know some of you geocash when camping, and it is fun. I just saw on another page where people paint rocks and hide them for other campers, I think this is a cute fun activity especially families with kids. They get bored sometimes. I would love to see this happen in this group. I'm going to ask my kids their in college but they love this stuff. I'm thinking painting a pic of popups or just PUCO for our group. I'm going camping this weekend. When I get home I'll post what campground and how many rocks we hide and kinda the vicinity. If no one ever finds them we can look next time we're there. Enjoy all, have a great day! "

Power trail, here I come :)
EDIT: actually should paint some up that say "for more fun, try Opencaching" with a link to OCNA. Hmm, not a bad idea.....
Yes, the painted rocks are really becoming a thing, and it's gone viral on Facebook. After I heard about them, and right round the same time, I had a brilliant idea that I was going to start a thread on Reddit (in Geocaching, of course), 'what if someone came along and "took over" this free grass roots game, and became a mutli millionaire?', and made comments on Twitter about it too, after posting a link to a news article on the game. Twitter is where TH saw my musings, and joked we could list them here.

We're not really considering this, are we? :P

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:16 pm
by KnowsOpie
Mr.Yuck wrote: We're not really considering this, are we? :P

Trackable at OpenCaching North America. :D Recently, I wrote "Painted rock starter kit" on some nice smooth river stones and have left them in geocaches. I painted rocks with my children when they were small, before we geocached together. I used to scribe coordinates on rocks and used them as swag. ;)

I could likely attach a BIT to a rock and clear coat it, and make it trackable or make a proxy geocoin with a painted rock. Seems workable to me, but I'm into rock collecting.

With or without OCNA painted rocks are becoming popular. If OCNA wants free advertisement, seems like a good idea to me. :idea:

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 4:44 pm
by Bon Echo
last summer on a "remote beach" (okay, a 1/2 mile hike or so) we found a rock, wasn't painted but had a bunch of words written on it with a sharpie. Basically invited people to take photos of where they found the rock and share on Instagram. I didn't since I don't use Instagram but seemed like a neat idea.

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 10:03 pm
by TermiteHunter

Re: New Benchmark cache type

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:56 pm
by Bon Echo
TermiteHunter wrote:More painted rocks
http://kdvr.com/2018/03/18/cop-rocks-hi ... D=ref_fark
Before I read the whole article, I wondered if it was a spoof - citizens encouraged to use the rocks to stop crime - throw said rocks at the bad guys..or something like that.