Tutorial

This presentation is at https://bit.ly/2txztzr

You are welcome to use this presentation. Please let me know if you find it helpful - juniorwoodchuckhuey@gmail.com

About me / disclaimers

• juniorwoodchuckhuey, geocaching since 2007
• Project-GC paid member since 2014
• I don’t work for Project-GC.
• I do teach statistics for a living, so be warned!

But more important:

• This is an interactive tutorial.
• We will take breaks to try things out.
• Ask questions or add comments anytime.

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What is Project-GC?

“An official Geocaching HQ partner that aims to provide dynamic statistics for geocachers around the world.”

A power tool for searching and displaying tons of geocaching information (on both caches and cachers)

Web-based

You use your geocaching account to access most features.

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Logging in to Project-GC

• Go to https://project-gc.com
• Click on “Authenticate” in upper right corner
• Click on “Authenticate” button to allow project-gc to get information from your geocaching.com account. You will be taken to geocaching.com
• You may be asked to log in to your geocaching.com account
• You will be asked to “Agree” to share information from your geocaching account with project-GC
• By doing this, you are not sharing your login information with Project-GC. You are sharing information such as your home coordinates.

Free / member features

• Project-GC has a membership option.
• It currently costs 20.00 EUR / 24.00 USD
• Some features are only available to members
• I will focus on free features today (and identify any “member only” features)
• See end of the presentation for a partial list of paid member features
• Based on your geocaching membership (free/premium), information will be available (or not).
• E.g. If you have a free geocaching account, PGC will not show you premium only geocaches.

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Map compare

• Tools > Map Compare
• Although designed to compare geocaches found between 2 cachers, it’s also a convenient way to map caches and learn about filters.
• First attempt:
• Profile Name: any geocaching name.
• “project-gc.com” can be used as a generic name
• Cache location: Canada / Nova Scotia / Kings
• Show: “None found” and “One found”
• Now click on “Filter”�
• Exploring the map:
• Full screen icon:
• PGC controls icon:
• Corrected coordinates, owned, found and my favorite: 161m circles

Map compare (continued)

Various map layers available

• OpenStreetMap and derivatives include community-contributed content (can include local trails)
• Google maps not available (but alternatives are good)

Icons for caches:

Filters (using “Map compare” as an example)

• Click on “Filters” to expand the filters list and edit your existing filters
• The pulldown menu “Add filter” lets you add various filters.
• Clicking on a “minus” icon beside a filter lets you remove that filter.
• “Centre/radius”: 5km radius around a geocache: Location: GC82WMZ / 5km
• “Show disabled / archived” (remember to click on “disabled” and “archived”)
• “From / To Hidden Date” (will come in handy later - hint, hint)
• “Cache Type / Size” (use with hidden date to find virtual rewards)
• Others include log date, D/T, bookmark list, etc

PGC members get more filters, including the ability to build your own. For example, I have filters on “Wilson score”, “archived only” etc

Pro tip: In your web browser, you can bookmark a map with specific queries. Build the query, and when you like the results, bookmark it in your browser. For example I have a bookmark for all caches in Kings county in a 20km radius.

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Actually using “map compare” to compare maps

Suppose 2 cachers are going on a trip and want to identify caches they haven’t found.

• Enter two usernames
• Select appropriate filters (eg area of interest)
• Check “None found” and “Owned as found” to identify caches that neither owns and neither has found
• (other possibilities include caches both have found, only 1 has found)
• Project-GC members can compare more than 2 cachers.

A note on corrected coordinates

Mystery caches have a “corrected coordinates” option on geocaching.com

However, not all PGC pages can access these corrected coordinates. Recommendation: add the corrected coordinates to the “notes” page of the geocache.

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Now you try it out

Home > Dashboard

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Profile stats can be embedded in your geocaching profile.

Home > Dashboard

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(Above) buttons above link to your geocaching account (handy)

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(Below) Jumping-off point for various convenient searches and tools

Wildcard Search: A powerful feature

Text search for caches with wildcards (* = any text)

Wildcard Search: A powerful feature

Scroll to end of the list - you can filter, add to Virtual GPS, or map (filter below)

Profile: statbar

Gives you HTML code that you can insert in a webpage (like your geocaching profile).

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Multiple versions (above with quote, below based on badgegen, enlarged to show texture)

Profile: FTF list

There are two ways for Project-GC to detect your FTFs. Either you tag your logs with one of these tags: {*FTF*} {FTF} [FTF].

Alternatively you can add an FTF bookmark list (from geocaching.com) under Settings that will be checked once per day.

Related tool: Profile > Forgotten FTFs

• Searches all logs of a cacher, identifying ones that might be FTFs

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Other tools under Profile

• Find bad logs - for any cacher, find “bad logs”
• … by other cachers on caches they own
• … by themselves (e.g. more than 1 “found it” on same cache)
• … logging your own cache as “found” (not illegal, but considered bad form by some)
• “Needs Maintenance?”
• Caches that have been flagged as “Needs Maintenance” (obviously)
• DNFs = most recent finds
• Disabled
• Forgotten favorites?
• Caches you haven’t favorited, but many others have
• My favorites
• Drawn on a map (for any cacher you specify)

Help!

The “Support” button offers several useful features:

• FAQ
• Self-support lets you request that an update be made to Project GC data (one run per week):
• Number of finds
• Found caches
• Hides
• Cache notes
• List of specific GC codes
• The above are relevant because Profile stats are refreshed weekly for non-members
• Community support - search discussion groups for help

Now you try it out

Statistics

Before starting on this menu, a brief digression:

A Wilson score is an adjusted percentage, used for favorite points

Percentages based on smaller logs are less trustworthy and downweighted

• Example: 36/40 (90%) is better than 19/20 (95%)
• More extreme example: 29/40 better than 5/5

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Statistics (OMG what a lot of statistics)

We don’t have a hope of covering all these. I’ll show some selected ones.

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Statistics: Profile: Who Favors Who?

Statistics: Cache Stats: Top Favorites (Wilson)

Note the ability to filter caches by all sorts of criteria (hint, hint)

Statistics: Cache Stats: Lonely Caches

Related: Days since last found (hint, hint)

Statistics: Find Stats

Statistics: Hide Stats (cachers)

Cachers with the most favorite points received.

As with most of these Statistics, note how you can apply filters.

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Statistics: Hide Stats

Statistics: Over time

Tools: Map D/T Matrix

Tools: Map D/T Matrix

Tools: Map Hidden Month

Tools: Challenge Checkers

Everyone can use challenge checkers

Paid Project-GC members can view maps of challenge checkers

The ANSG website has a listing of NS Challenges: �https://sites.google.com/nsgeocaching.com/main/home/other-caches-of-interest

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Tools: Challenge Checkers

Premium features

• Virtual GPS: collect together & export caches (GPX or to geocaching.com bookmark list).
• Includes map tools where you can draw a shape around caches and add to Virtual GPS �(“Building GPX files also requires a premium membership with Geocaching.com”)
• Multi Map Compare (> 2 cachers)
• Live map with more filters
• Gallery - nice interface to see all pictures logged by a cacher
• Custom filters: build your own filters for use everywhere on project-gc
• Route builder: build a route that can be used as a filter
• Email notifications for:
• New caches
• Edits to logs of geocaches you own
• Images added to geocaches you own
• Favorite points added (or removed) from geocaches you own
• No ads
• The web browser extension is more useful.
• Lots more, see https://project-gc.com/Home/Membership

More on some “member” features

The Virtual GPS is described as a “shopping cart for caches”.

They’re a bit like geocaching.com bookmark lists. Paid members have access to this feature.

You can add the results different searches to your VGPS.

For example, the “Wildcard search” demonstrated earlier gives a spreadsheet-like listing of caches. You can select some or all caches in the results, and then add them to your VGPS:

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VGPS, continued

In “Map Compare” you can identify a polygon (points are draggable).

Then you can add to VGPS

Member feature:Routes

Route Builder can be found under your username (link in upper right corner)

Build (right) then save (below)

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Route builder, continued

Map at right shows what the route I built looks like.

It doesn’t seem possible to edit a route. But you could divide it up into smaller parts.

Route builder, continued

Once saved, your route can become a filter in other searches, like the “Map Compare” here.

In this case, I looked for caches in NS, not found by juniorwoodchuckhuey, on the route Wolfville to Windsor.

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Member features: custom filters

Click on your username (upper right corner), choose “Custom filters”.

• To make a new filter, click on “New”
• Enter a new filter name, click on “Add” to the right of “Statements”
• Select the criteria you want. For example, Favorite points > 50
• Click on “Add statements”
• Click on “Add to filter”
• Click “Save” beside “Filter Name”

Your filter should be available to use now, in other searches.

You can go back to the custom filters page and edit a filter.

I know there’s more but I’m getting tired

There are other features for members that I haven’t had time to explore.

As time allows I’ll add those. If you have suggestions or want to add something, let me know (contact info on first page).

Tutorial