I'm a Premium Subscriber with Geocaching.com and I heartily recommend it; to sign up for that, check this link: Premium Subscriber Info. One of the feaures of Premium Subscriber-ness is the "Pocket Query Generator". It enables you to set criteria for the kind and location of caches you want downloaded from the website. There are several criteria possible but I use it to download nearby caches that meet these six:
1) 100 caches (max)
2) All types (traditional, multi, virtual, etc.)
3) That I haven't already found
4) That I don't own (that is, that I didn't place)
5) With terrain equal to or less than 3
6) Within 20 miles of my home
I set it up to download to my email address every day in the EasyGPS .LOC format AND the Palm Pilot eBook format, both files in a ZIP file. The result is that, every day, I get a .LOC file (and a .PRC file for my Palm) with just the caches I want. If, before heading out, I download the latest file into the GPS receiver I have only those waypoints that makes sense and there's no clutter (well, not much clutter..)
I had two problems with this:
1) To be really useful, it would be nice to have my home coordinates in the file; that way I could use EasyGPS to see which ones were closest.
2) I've discovered that a number of caches that otherwise meet my criteria are just not caches I'll ever try to find. Yet, they are in the file every day. Some of the caches I've found to be much more difficult (terrain-wise) than rated by the cache owner. Some are very complex multis that are just not worth the trouble for a single smiley :)
My friend Rich (who has the same problem I do) suggested that I write a program to pre-process the .LOC file before using it with EasyGPS so that we COULD have the home location (and other coords we want to manually enter) in the file AND exclude those caches we know we don't want.
I've been a programmer for nearly forty years so I took the task on. The result is:
GeoEdit
I've decided to make this program available for free to anyone who wants it and I've provided a manual in two forms; click HERE to read the GeoEdit manual online or HERE to download the manual in Word format. NOTE: You may want to read or download the manual first to see if GeoEdit is something you'd like to have; either way, a copy of the document is included in the GeoEdit download itself.
If you want to download GeoEdit, just click HERE. The download includes my GeoEdit.doc Word document; it (hopefully) should answer all your questions.
If you find GeoEdit useful I'd appreciate a contribution -- but there's no obligation (and the program won't nag you!). Click the "Make a Donation" button below to see how to contribute via PayPal.
If you have questions or comments, click HERE to write to me.
Good luck -- and happy Geocaching!
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