We just can’t say enough about Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK), that wondrous work of software artistry that every serious geocacher should have on hand. GSAK costs $25, but is well worth the price if you geocache regularly (We get [...]]]> In our weekly Tech Tuesday tip, we tell you how to use technology to help you geocache.

We just can’t say enough about Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK), that wondrous work of software artistry that every serious geocacher should have on hand. GSAK costs $25, but is well worth the price if you geocache regularly (We get paid nothing to say this; we just love GSAK!).

The program is a database manager for geocaches. It makes it easy for you to sort, filter and annotate caches you found and those you want to find. Once you install it, you will want to keep all your geocaching records there. Each time you update a record from a GPX file, GSAK preserves the entire history in the database. So you can hit the road with a long history of notes and log entries.

The annotation feature is particularly cool. If you’re the type of person who likes to keep notes for later use or to share with others, GSAK’s “user notes” feature makes this easy.

For example, if you’ve already made one run at the cache and failed to find, you can add a user note describing where you’ve already looked. Or suppose the cache is 50 feet away from the posted coordinates. With user notes, you can document that fact and share it with others when they go after the same targets. You can also store things like puzzle solutions here for later use. And speaking of puzzles, when you solve them, GSAK makes it easy to change coordinates for loading into your GPSr.

There are lots of other great features of GSAK, which we’ll highlight periodically in our Tech Tuesday series.

Read our profile and listen to our audio interview with Clyde England, inventor of GSAK.

In this Geo-Jargon Monday, we’d like to tell you what “BYOP” is.

BYOP means…

Bring Your Own Pen (or Pencil). Frequently, a cache owner or fellow cacher who [...]]]> Sometimes all the acronyms of geocaching can get confusing to a newbie, so we’d like to help with some common abbreviations that cachers will find in logs and descriptions on Geocaching.com.

In this Geo-Jargon Monday, we’d like to tell you what “BYOP” is.

BYOP means…

Bring Your Own Pen (or Pencil). Frequently, a cache owner or fellow cacher who has recently found a cache will alert you that the container is too small for a pen or pencil and that you need to bring your own in order to sign the log.

Really, a pen is one of the things that a cacher should never be without, so consider the BYOP to be a reminder of a good practice for any cache!

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Thanks to Prime Suspect and his GeoLex, the Lexicon for Geocaching, for the use of these fantastic definitions of all things geocaching!

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Clyde England, the developer of Geocaching Swiss Army Knife, told us this story. It’s an example of how hints can actually throw you off the trail:

“The cache that was set on the banks of a [...]]]> In our Find It Friday tip, we’d like to give you a clue about what to do when searching for a cache.

Clyde England, the developer of Geocaching Swiss Army Knife, told us this story. It’s an example of how hints can actually throw you off the trail:

“The cache that was set on the banks of a river. The clue said it was a magnetic micro. I assumed it would be attached to something metal. I looked for maybe two hours. I was totally frustrated, so I rang up the guy who placed the cache and he gave me a hint. It turned out that the mention of the magnetic micro had nothing to do with at all with the location of the cache. It was hidden in a tree. The actual container was a magnetic micro, but it wasn’t attached to anything metal.”

Doh!

We also like the hint that one of our favorites geocachers (whose name we’ll withhold to protect the identity of the cache) used for one of his hides: “4×4 container under rocks.” Veteran geocachers know that “4×4″ usually refers to a Lock & Lock container about the size of a sandwich. But in this case, the target was a Nissan Pathfinder 4×4. And yes, there are rocks on top of the roof (see photo).

So don’t assume the hints are always meant to help you. Sometimes they can actually do the opposite!

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For history lessons, correlate coordinates to facts and figures. For instance, students have to find out what year the Civil War ended in order to learn key numbers in coordinates.

There are already lots of puzzlers who have created geocaches that require research, whether [...]]]> There are almost endless possibilities to link geocaching with education. Here’s one of them:

For history lessons, correlate coordinates to facts and figures. For instance, students have to find out what year the Civil War ended in order to learn key numbers in coordinates.

There are already lots of puzzlers who have created geocaches that require research, whether it’s astronomical, historical, or local. Find a creative puzzle cache in your area and set your students loose at the library to research the answer.

Or contact that cacher and ask her to create a special cache for your class having to do with the subject you’re studying. Most puzzlers are just looking for their next opportunity and would love to give back to their community and teach kids about geocaching and about history.

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For security reasons, the U.S. government won’t let the civilian GPS network be too accurate. That means that even the best GPS receivers give you no better than 3-meter (10-foot) precision. A little high school geometry will [...]]]> In this week’s Tech Tuesday tip, we’ll give you a clue on how to use technology to help you geocache.

For security reasons, the U.S. government won’t let the civilian GPS network be too accurate. That means that even the best GPS receivers give you no better than 3-meter (10-foot) precision. A little high school geometry will tell that means that even when you’re standing at ground zero, your search radius is still about 315 feet. That’s why many veterans put away their GPSr and start looking for clues 20 or 30 feet before they reach their target.

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A shorty pen is…

An ink pen that has been shortened enough to fit into a small cache container. There are companies that sell them online (like ShortyPen.com) or you can scour dollar stores or bargain aisles at stores like Walmart or Target for [...]]]> In today’s Geo-Jargon Monday, we’d like to tell you what a “shorty pen” is.

A shorty pen is…

An ink pen that has been shortened enough to fit into a small cache container. There are companies that sell them online (like ShortyPen.com) or you can scour dollar stores or bargain aisles at stores like Walmart or Target for a good selection.

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Thanks to Prime Suspect and his GeoLex, the Lexicon for Geocaching, for the use of these fantastic definitions of all things geocaching!

Got your own tip? Comment on this post to share!

The best piece of geocaching advice we’ve ever received, the one we try to remember and curse ourselves when we ignore is simply this: Stay on the trail as long as possible. We’ve bushwhacked through [...]]]> In our Find It Friday tip, we’d like to give you a clue about what to do when searching for a cache.

The best piece of geocaching advice we’ve ever received, the one we try to remember and curse ourselves when we ignore is simply this: Stay on the trail as long as possible. We’ve bushwhacked through 5-foot high fields of grass and nettles, we’ve scratched our legs and arms on undergrowth and brambles, we’ve fallen in holes we shouldn’t have and twisted our ankles. But we would not have gone through all this if we had abided by the rule more often. And more often than not, when we finally do find the cache, we find a perfectly wonderfully manicured trail not 10 feet from it, that we inevitably take back to the car or off to the next destination.

Chances are good that the path that seems like it’s going in the wrong direction will loop around just in time or lead to a fork or head up a hill. Most caches are placed within a few feet of an trail (and if they aren’t, the cache description should tell you this), so there’s really no need to fight Mother Nature.

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