So, now that that is done...

I finally got all three blogs merged into this one. Phew.

This is better anyway, I think. I bounce around with so much stuff that I just can't have a blog for each thing.

Now, before I make this a public blog, I must go delete a couple of posts.

This isn't funny...

It still gave me a giggle.

http://www.900chml.com/Channels/Reg/NewsLocalGeneral/Story.aspx?ID=1003929

http://www.900chml.com/Pics/Channels/1197/Thumbnail/geocache.jpg

Geocaching game gets blame for calling out of bomb squad
Jay McQueen
4/10/2008

Police say a suspicious package found behind Costco and Home Depot thought to be a bomb, was actually part of a game.

A store employee called police yesterday morning after finding a cylindrical device with a wire attached to it hanging from a tree behind the Meadowlands Power Centre.

The Emergency Response Unit and bomb squad were sent to the scene and determined the device was actually part of a worldwide game for GPS users called Geocaching. Players seek out the device using their GPS units and then sign a piece of paper with a pencil, which were contained inside the tube.

Police say there was nothing illegal done but are asking Geocachers to notify property owners if they plan on placing these packages on private property to avoid tying up police resources and causing undue distress.

The package was placed in the tree on January 13th and police say the paper inside had been signed by 38 people.

I went to another card making party on Sunday afternoon with Michelle. The host is a stampin' up rep in the area. This was the third or fourth party now, that I've gone to. I really have fun going.

Anyway we made 4 cards, and I bought some stuff. I bought the earth elements sample pack of 8.5 x 11 paper, a chocolate chip stamp pad, and some watercolor pencils and blender pens.

I took today off, because Wednesday's are Luc's day off, so it's fun to have a day together.

I actually had him out geocaching with me. YEA!

I had a list of nine to look for today, but he had to run into work for a bit, which of course took way longer than it was supposed to. We ended up looking for two.

Up in around Russell Lake in Dartmouth, there is a series of caches called the turtle series, set up by a cacher called durango0072.

They are little green turtles about 10 inches wide, where you screw off the back and there is a treasure inside.

We found this one... Turtle Pond

We looked for this one, but we ran out of time before we had to head home. Turtle Brook

On an un-geocaching note, we fired up the barbecue for the first time tonight. Yummy. We had chicken, potato and greek salad.

Then Luc and I went to Walmart and bought one of these.

And we are going to put it here...

It's kind of hard to see, but there is a gazebo frame on the lower deck. Apparently Luc is going to build a 5 foot wall with a one foot lattice, and a roof around the spa.

I think it will be pretty neat when it's done.

I guess, we'll have to put the friends that ask too many questions, some where else. LOL.

This is a project from Environment Canada involving schools and geocachers. Spreading information about the local watersheds. The objective is to get local high school students to gather information about the local watersheds, and pass that information off to the local geocachers through hiding caches.

http://www.ec.gc.ca/geocache/default.asp?lang=En&n=E923094B-1

Here is a local geocache with regards to this project.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=aec87a82-2dd5-4dd2-987e-3baafd2a2c8e

This geocache was set up by students from Sackville High School.

Here is some information about watersheds.


http://www.ec.gc.ca/geocache/default.asp?lang=En&n=065E5744-1

Off to send an email off to Courtney’s high school. I'd love to see our local high school get involved with this.

Hidden Treasures to be Discovered.

Here is an article in a local community newspaper about geocaching.

http://www.halifaxwestclaytonparknews.ca/index.cfm?sid=119083&sc=204

Next time you're shopping at the Joseph Howe Superstore, take a look around the parking lot. One of the lamp posts holds treasure.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game where participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) to find hidden containers.

For Clayton Park and Halifax West adventurers, there are a multitude of caches to be found in the area.

Jim Cyr, president of the Atlantic Canada Geocaching Association (ACGA) and one of the founding members, became involved in geocaching in the fall of 2005.

The group now boasts almost 400 members across Atlantic Canada, the majority of them from Nova Scotia.The first geocache to be placed in Canada was in East River, near Chester.

The ACGA formed to celebrate the sixth anniversary of that cache and placed a plaque at Graves Island to commemorate it.

This international game of hide and seek began in 2000 with the formation of a GPS newsgroup.

"Someone went into the Oregon woods with a log book and pencil and took co-ordinates. They posted it on the group and gave up the challenge - 'I dare you to find it,'" said Cyr. "The first one was found three times in a day or two."Now, there are more than 500,000 caches in more than 225 countries around the world.

Last month, Nova Scotia surpassed the 4,000 mark."East River was the 41st overall, (so) we've been doing geocaching since the beginning," said Cyr.

A GPS is all that's required to get started. In 2000, GPS's were less accurate and more expensive than today. Now GPSs can be as accurate as six feet or less. Cyr recommended using one relatively recent on the market. Geocachers then register on the official site at www.geocaching.com and type in their postal code to find caches in their area.

Cyr said the majority of their members are over 30 and include singles, couples, retirees, military personnel and young families."There's nothing kids love more than finding treasure chest or a cache," he said. "We find that they're interested from children to early teens.

Then they discover dating and we lose them for a while, but it starts again in university."Caches can be found on walking trails around HRM, in Hemlock Ravine Park, the Kearney Lake Trail, the Mainland Commons and Bayers Lake."Most of them in parking lots are called Park and Grabs. You'll usually find these ones hidden in a lamp post in a film cannister. You just have to lift the bottem of them up," said Cyr.

Traditional caches are placed in a waterproof container and contain a log book and trinkets, such as unusual coins or small toys. The coordinates are then posted on the website.

There are rules of etiquette for searchers. Since many of the caches are on trails, geocachers try not to disturb the environment and use existing trails and paths. Always put the lid back on properly so water doesn't get in and ruin anything and if you take a trade item, leave something of equal or greater value to replace it.

Glenbourne area resident Todd Beal has been geocaching for more than four years. The treasurer of the ACGA and also a founding member was into hiking and the outdoors when he accidently came upon it.

Since then, he has left about 20 caches around HRM."I thought it was neat thing to do. Some call it a sport, I call it a hobby. I like going outside and enjoying nature and finding spots I didn't know existed," said Beal. "I started without a receiver. That didn't work so well and was hit and miss, so for Christmas that year I got one.

It was much more efficient."For newbies, Beal advises to keep it simple and to find at least 50 caches before hiding their own to see what people are doing. He estimates there are at least 100 caches in the Clayton Park Fairview area and about 1,000 in the HRM."When I started, there were less than 100 in Nova Scotia," he said. "It's really taken off."

The ACGA offers workshops to new geocachers. The next one is being held on April 16 at the Trail Shop on Quinpool Road.

In the meantime, Cyr had some tips."Always remember safety when going out for first time. Know where you're going and go to familiar areas," he said. "Do your research and mark where you parked the car."He also said to make sure batteries are charged, dress appropriately, tell people where you're going and know the weather."Especially around here, you could slip and fall, (or) the weather turns," he said.

For further information, go to www.atlanticgeocaching.com or www.geocaching.com

What is geocaching?

So here it is, the what is geocaching post.

Geocaching is a world wide hi-tech adventure game of hide and seek. It’s the most expensive sport in the world. HA HA. The costs are out of this world. The beauty of it is though that governments have already spent billions to make the sport happen by launching sattelites. For us players the equipment for the sport only costs a little bit. You can get a basic hand held GPS unit for $100 or so.

The object of the game is for a hider to hide a cache. A cache is a small waterproof container to hold a log book, pencil and maybe some small trading items (SWAG). The hider posts the coordinates of the cache to the internet at a website like http://www.geocaching.com/ and all the seekers try to find it.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s one thing to know where the item is, it’s another to actually find it. Besides the sometimes long hikes to actually get to where the cache is, it could be hidden under a rock, in a tree trunk, in a hole in the ground. The cache could be large enough to contain lots of treasure, but it could also be as small as a 35 mm film canister.

Geocaching itself has only been around since 2000, after the removal of satellite selective availability from GPS, this allowed for greater accuracy. It is similar to letterboxing which has been around for about 150 years. In letterboxing a box is hidden and clues were left in magazines. Each hider and seeker had a stamp and a logbook. The hiders stamp was in the cache with their logbooks. The seeker stamped the hider’s logbook with their stamp and stamped their own logbook with the hiders stamp.

There are a few variations for geocaching. A few of the more popular ones are the traditional which includes at a minimum a log book, a multi cache where each cache holds the coordinates for the next one, an event cache which is an organized event for many cachers, a Cache In Trash Out event which is organized to remove garbage from an area, an earthcache where the idea is to learn about the geology of the area where the cache is found, and a new type called whereigo which is an interactive story game like Myst except it’s in the real world.

There are some ethics involved with geocaching as well. The number one concern is to protect the environment. With that in mind the coordinate hosts have rules that need to be followed before they will post coordinates of a cache.

So I'm still putting together the "What is geocaching" post. I have some notes. I just need to put it together. There is just so much else to do, to talk about.

So I finally bought another GPS. I bought the garmin legend handheld. That's fun. The battery lasts for.ever. OK 18 hours, it just seems like forever. I think it must have been a return because lo and behold it has a Nova Scotia street map on it. Well that just makes this machine so much fun. It doesn't talk to me, and it doesn't have a color screen, but it makes finding the deceptively easy caches not so easy to find. HA! And of course the kids much prefer the pretty screen and the talking voice of the Maestro. OH WELL.

I have to take minute to talk about these little guys again. HA HA HA. People are going to get sick of looking at him. I think he's just so darn cute though. This little guy is Signal. He's the mascot over at http://www.geocaching.com/ . I made him using my cricut machine. He's 2.5 x 2 inches and I've numbered them and put my username was here. I think it's a cute little card to throw into a cache that I've found. It's unique. It involves my other hobby.

I made my first etsy sale. I'm sure someone must be feeling sorry for me. HA. I sold a card. This card. I really like this card. So I'm pretty excited that someone else out there likes it too.

Another hobby I've gotten into is geocaching. Fun stuff. I have another blog about those misadventures here. I wanted a little something to add to the cache that was unique. So I made these little guys.

This little guy's name is signal. He's the mascot over at geocaching.com. I made him with my cricut, geordge cartrdige and design studio. I think he's pretty cute. He's about 2.5 inches high by 2 inches wide. on that back I wrote my username was here. I think that's pretty unique. My son and I spent a couple of hours on the weekend putting these little guys together.

Wheee.








A couple of purchases lately. I bought the Doodlecharms cartridge for my cricut machine. I haven't used it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. This is one of the cartridges that has been on my wish list almost from the beginning.


Another great purchase that has been on my wishlist is the crop a dile. It can punch holes, set eyelets and snaps. No more hammers, loud banging and crappy sets for eyelets.

Just a little update

So I went on another little hunt. My daughter and I went looking for a cache that was located in a local sportsplex. I hadn't decoded a morse code hint and so we looked around stairwells and plants and under stairs. There were lots of muggles around so we didn't get too far.

What's a muggle you ask? Apparently it has something to do with Harry Potter. In geocaching it has something to do with someone upsetting / stealing / wrecking a cache. I will have to research it some more just so I know what I'm talking about. Both references actually.

Oh yea, back to the cache.

So Son and Daughter had soccer registration at the same sportsplex the other night so I thought I would give it another go. This time I decoded the morse code. Well, that answers a lot. It was a number. It was a number to what I assumed was a book in the library that was in the sportsplex. AHA! So off I went. Well, after I spent half an hour standing in lines to get the kids registered for soccer.

I found the number and the book in the Reference section. Isn't that nifty there is a book in the library about the Atlantic Geocachers. Oh wait. I'm a numbnut. It's a book with a printout on the spine. Anyway, the book was cut out to hold the cache. Pretty clever if you ask me. I found it. Wheee!

In other news, I'm working on a history of geocaching and a what is geocaching post. I am more than likely going to get a garmin legend anyway, even though I took it back. The Magellan batter just doesn't last long enough to do anything with, and it's just too delicate to walk through the mud and the much with.

My First Find...

I went on my first hunt today. I went looking for something that was easy to find and close to work. With a Satelite picture, the GPS and and a printout of the cache page. Off we went. We being a coworker (R) , who shall remain nameless on the internet, and myself.

When they say it’s deceptively easy, they aren’t kidding. How hard can it be? Right?

So we found the parking lot. That was the easy part. It’s snow covered. We trek down a hill. It’s a little hill. But you can see where people have been sledding. Did I mention we are doing this at lunch from work, so we are not prepared for trudging through snow and muk in our healed boots.

R was looking at the picture and I had the GPS. Looking at the picture now, it all makes sense. You know what they say about hindsight right? We started looking in the section of trees just past the first base line. Yea. I know. It’s not there. Trudging through the snow, half way up the hill, in our pretty little boots. Rummaging through the branches. Kicking at garbage. Wondering what was in the big, full, garbage bag. I finally look at the map of the GPS instead of the coordinates and it shows we are not even close. D’Oh.

We then turn our sights elsewhere. To the clump of trees, where the cache is stashed. R finds it in the roots of a tree. Covered with rocks. It was a real pain in the butt to try and get it out. Pretty neat. It’s a little cammoflaged container. Probably 6 inches in diameter. It had a couple of little baggies in it. One for the log book. Another had a very pretty cameo pin in it. One bag had what looked like a pencil sharpener, a couple of stickers, a hair clip. We didn’t really look too much. I thought I saw a travel bug, but I’m still not sure what they are or how they are used. I didn’t even take it out of the container.

We didn’t take anything or leave anything, I just signed the book. Put everything back the way we found it and headed back to the car. Up the hill.

What a workout. This coming from someone who doesn’t work out AT. ALL. I got back to the car, huffing and puffing. Can you say OUT. OF. SHAPE. (Actually no, I was breathing too heavily.) And this was an easy one. I think I’ll wait until I’m in better shape before I start looking for the hard ones.

But it sure was fun.

And so the adventure... er addiction begins

So with the purchase of our new motorhome and our impending vacation to New Brunswick and Maine, I had the bright idea to get a GPS unit for directions and for geocaching.

I'm not sure where I first heard about geocaching, but it always looked like fun, so I figured at some point I would give it a try.

Last Friday I bought a Garmin etrex Legend (on the right). I didn't have it very long so take my opinion for what it's worth. It wasn't very user friendly. The instructions that came with it were very limited, so it was hard for someone that had never turned one on before to maneuver around. I found it wasn't mappy enough. It only had the major streets and highways on it, so it wasn't going to be very practical for travelling and directions.

Luc was looking at them Friday night and thought the Magellan Maestro 3140 (on the left) would be more inline with what we (he :) ) wanted. It was on sale too. Half Price. Which was only $50 more than what I had paid for the Garmin. So I took back the Garmin and bought the Magellan. A GPS is a GPS. Right???

I have to say for directions, this thing is the cats meow. It's color and changes for day and night viewing. You enter the address, it calculates the route it talks, beeps and chimes when it's time to turn, it tells you how fast you are going, when you will arrive at your destination. It shows you tons of points of interests. Shopping. Gas stations. Banks. Schools. I seriously could go on and on about what this thing does. It is linked with AAA and CAA assistance. Campgrounds. It shows campgrounds.

It uses a windows based operating system. Windows CE Core 5.0. It holds an SD card. The USB port (is that the right term) is standard. It has a touch screen.

It is literally a plug and play machine. Very easy to use.

For geocaching, it's not so good. At first glance there is no place to enter coordinates (Note, I said at first glance. :) ). It's not very portable. If you drop it, it's going to break. It is not waterproof AT. ALL. The GPS screen (at the right) is well, meh, cluttered and hard to read.

So I spent all weekend playing with it. Seeing what it could do. Trying to figure out if I was ever going to be able to geocache with it.

I finally figured it out.

Once you do it a couple of times, it's not as cumbersome as it seems, and you can load hundreds of caches in a matter of minutes.

1. Start at geocaching.com
2. Once you have searched and found your list of caches, download your waypoints. Your waypoints get downloaded as a .loc file
3. I downloaded a GPS program called GSAK . to translate the .loc file into a .gpx file
4. With the GPS came a disk to download the Magellan POI program. Open this program and open the .GPX file. Save it as a .mgln file on the SD card in a CPOI directory.
5. On the handheld tap Points of Interest. Then Enhanced. Then change POI file.
6. Next time you enter your map, you will see all your way points.
7. Pick a waypoint and a way you go.

*I may edit this later, I'm going from memory at the moment.

This is the scrapbook page I made for the kids DARE Graduations.

Dare is Drug Awareness Resistance Education.

The flourish is designed in DSS. Just say No is done with Printing Press.

I also found a DARE logo on the web to add.

Here's a card I made for my public pal at cricut.com.

The stamp set is Happy Harmony from Stampin' Up.

The paper is a paper pad I got from Walmart, and the ribbon is probably from the dollar store. It's too bad the colors aren't clearer. The paper is a turquoisey color.

The quote says "It's the little things that make life Big." I hope she likes it.

I used the same stamps for my February stamp swap as well.

We bought this. It's a Magellan Maestro 3140. It's not really what I wanted, but It's pretty cool.

What did I want? I wanted one that would do what this one does, but I wanted to also be able to enter lon-lat coordinates so I could geocache too.

Oh well, If I really want one to geocache with, I'll just go buy one. Well, in a few weeks I guess.

What does this have to do with crafting. Well lets see. It shows you what goes on in the mind of the person who created all those wonderful crafts you've seen earlier. HA! Geocaching could lead to some great pictures to scrap.

I've been using it for a couple of months now I guess. Anyway, I thought I would discuss it. LOL. I'm not very articulate so please bear with me.


Here is a link for the trial version from Hallmarkscrapbook.com The trial version is a fully working version. You do not have the ability to cut all of your cartridges, only the cartridges that comes with your machine. Once you pay for it, you have the ability to cut all of your cartridges.

http://www.hallmarkscrapbook.com/cricut-designstudio-cricut-design-studio-info-i-9.html


What is it? It is a software program used in conjunction with your cricut original or cricut expression machine. What does it do? It gives the user the power to manipulate the shapes and fonts. Use more than one of your own cartridges in the same cut. You can flip and rotate your cut. You can weld as well.

So here is the main screen that you do all your work in.





Here are a couple of designs that I've done. Nothing too intricate.

What do I like about it? I like the unlimited possibilities. I like being able to see how something is going to look before I cut it.



What don't I like about it? There is no select option or group option so once you have something designed and you want to move it as a group or resize it, you have to resize each individual shape. There seems to be a lot of people having issues with making it work, and customer service doesn't seem to be responding in an acceptable amount of time. Although I haven't had any issues myself. I'm only using the trial version at the moment. Because of the "What I don't like about it" I haven't taken the plunge to buy it. I have seen it on ebay or at the couple of different scrapbooking sites for about $60-$70.



And then...


There is also another software program called "Sure Cuts a Lot" that works directly with your computer allowing you to cut any of your TT fonts on your computer. Although there isn't the option of shadowing or welding. I'm sure I've missed lots. But that's my take on it.

These were a couple of Halloween sculptures I made.

Here are a couple of scrapbook pages that I've done...