In this release, I added the ability to send tweets to your Twitter followers, directly from within CacheStats.  Of course, you’ll need to have a Twitter account to take advantage of this feature. There are several ways to send a tweet…

First, each time you load a new GPX file, CacheStats presents you with a summary of your activity since your previous My Finds query.  To send a tweet with that summary information, just click on the link in CacheStats:

When you click the link, the default message will read something like this: “Over the past 104 days I've cached 7 days and found 25 caches with average D/T = 1.94/2.06. On pace for 74 this year.”  CacheStats will let you modify the message before sending it out.

Another way to send a tweet is from the Caches tab where you can send a tweet for an individual cache:

When you click on the link the default message will be “Found Geocache: [name of cache]. [URL of cache].  This in itself is a pretty dull message.  If you send this type of tweet I encourage you to add a few words about the cache to make it more interesting for your readers.  My hope is that people will use this feature to point out interesting caches they have found, not to post a complete list of their finds.

Finally, if you just want to send a random tweet, you can click the “Send a tweet” button found at the bottom of the main CacheStats window.

For now, I only added the ability to send tweets, not the ability to read your twitter feed.  I’ll wait and see how popular this feature becomes before adding more to it. If you’d like to see more support for Twitter features, be sure to let me know.

I just released an update to CacheStats that has a couple of new small features: first, you can now sort your location list (i.e. states and countries) by order found, number found, or alphabetically. Just click on the appropriate button at the bottom of the Locations tab.  Second, I’ve added “hyperlink” capability so you can navigate to specific caches or groups of caches in the caches tab by clicking on data in the statistics tab such as dates and grid entries. For example, if you want to see caches for a specific difficulty and/or terrain, you can click a cell in the D/T grid. Similarly, click in the calendar grid to take you to the caches found for a specific day or month. The following screen shots explain it much better than I can with words.

Here’s the difficulty/terrain grid. Notice numbers are now underlined indicating they are clickable.  When you click on a number, it will take you to the appropriate spot in your cache list on the caches tab.

Besides the D/T and Calendar grids, many of the lists (such as milestones and geocache size and type) are now navigable too. For example here’s a screenshot of the Cache Type list:

Finally, many of the dates that are shown on the statistics page will take you to the caches for that date:

If you enjoy reviewing your past accomplishments and recalling what happened when, I think you’ll like this new feature.  As usual, to upgrade, just download from the CacheStats website and start the installation.  Your previous version will automatically be uninstalled.

Version 3.0.6 is now available from the CacheStats website. This update fixes a couple of problems with the way CacheStats stores FTFs which caused an incorrect FTF count to be shown for some people.  If your FTF count is correct, there is no need for you to download this update.

Geocaching.com recently made a subtle change to the way dates and times are stored in GPX files.  They are now stored using UTC format, or Coordinated Universal Time (the same time zone as Greenwich Mean Time).  (Why is Coordinated Universal Time abbreviated UTC you might ask?  You’ll have to read the Wikipedia article).  Because of this change, some of your found dates reported in CacheStats may be off by one day.  This update provides a fix for that.  But not all users are affected – it actually depends on your time zone.  Read on if you want to know the gory details.

Dates and times in the old GPX file format didn’t specify any time zone, so CacheStats simply reported whatever date was saved in the GPX file as the date you found the geocache.  But when the log dates changed to the UTC time zone (London for example), CacheStats automatically translated the date and time of the log to your local time zone.  OK, so what?  Turns out almost all of the log dates stored in a GPX file are either 07:00 or 19:00, not the actual time of day they were logged.  So let’s say you live in eastern Australia, which is UTC plus 10 hours.  Logs that have a timestamp of 07:00 were translated to 17:00 (07:00 in London = 17:00 in Australia).  These logs posed no problem for CacheStats since the date was the same either way.  But the logs that have a timestamp of 19:00 were translated to 05:00 the next day.  Bottom line, the farther away from London you live, the more likely you are to encounter a problem.  If you’re within 7:00 hours west of UTC (most of the United States) or within 5 hours east of UTC, you shouldn’t have any problems and there is no reason for you to download this update (this fix is the only change in the update).  As my chemistry teacher used to say, “clear as mud, right?”.  If you need the update, you can download it at the CacheStats web page.  Simply download and reinstall – the previous version will automatically be uninstalled.

I just released a minor update to CacheStats .  The most notable feature in this release is a “Finds by Day of Year” grid, similar to ones you’ve probably seen in user profiles that were generated by other statistics programs.  The grid shows your number of finds for each day of the year.  You can choose to show each year individually or all years combined (although when exporting to your profile, only the all-years-combined grid will show).  Need another excuse to get out geocaching?  Probably not, but if you’re one who can’t stand those open squares in your grid, you’ll feel an extra tug to get out the door when you see you’ve never been caching on a particular day.

The other features you may notice are a couple of improvements to the difficulty/terrain grid: completed squares are now shaded (using the same color that you choose for your profile), and totals are shown for each row and column.  Graphic design is definitely not my strong point, but hopefully this extra splash of color improves the look a little bit.

Other changes in this release include:

1. If your oldest cache found has been archived, it also shows the oldest active cache you have found
2. Fix a problem when counting streaks due to non-standard log dates in the GPX file
3. Increase default height of the main window if the screen resolution supports it
4. Minor cosmetic changes, including fixing a longest streak count which was getting truncated at 3 digits
5. Better support for the Mono environment, which allows CacheStats to run under Mac and Linux (see the FAQ for more information).

To upgrade to this release, download from the CacheStats website and run the installation program.  Your previous version will be replaced so there is no need to uninstall it first.

Happy caching!

"Haven't we been here before?"  As I approach my 5th anniversary of geocaching, I find myself asking that more and more as older caches get archived and new ones are created to take their place.  Often I have a vague recollection of the area, but can't remember which cache (if any) used to be there.  It used to be that you could go to the maps at geocaching.com to see all caches in an area including the archived ones, but they removed that feature a couple of years ago. I was sad to see that feature go because I often used it to refresh my memory as to when and why we were previously in that area. This release of CacheStats contains a new feature that partially addresses the issue.  You can now show all caches (that you have found) that are nearby any given cache.  Here's how it works.

First, in the cache list, select the cache you would like to find nearby caches for.  For this example, I’ll select a cache called Hospital View:

Then select how far away you want to search, and click Show:

When you click show, the cache list will update to show just those caches that are within the given distance of the selected cache. When you click on those caches, CacheStats displays the distance away from the original cache in the cache description area.  In this example, I had previously found a cache just 1/10 of a mile away from the Hospital View cache:

When you are done, click Cancel to display the full list again.

This feature can also be used to explore cache density.  For example, pick a cache in a cache-rich area and see how many caches you have found within a mile of it.

Remember, your GPX pocket query only contains caches that you have found, so CacheStats can't show you nearby caches that you haven't found yet. Too bad, because the other situation I run into is that caches that I thought were in an area are no longer there when I'm ready to go look for them.  I like to know if it got archived recently, and if so, why?  Unless you can remember the name, there's no way to know.  Hopefully at some point geocaching.com will bring back the capability to show archived caches.

Another new feature in this release which you may have noticed in the first screenshot above: the cache list now shows type icons next to the cache name (e.g. traditional, multi, event, etc.)

Finally, I added a new blogger, TripCyclone, to the list of blogs to choose from on the news and status page.  If you know of any bloggers who write frequent articles that are of general interest, let me know and I can include them in the next release.

Hope you enjoy the new feature.

Oops.  One of the enhancements I added to 3.0 was to put Canadian geocaches into their own category instead of grouping them in “other states”. But by doing this, I accidentally broke the map that gets generated for Canada (no provinces were colored in).  This has been fixed and you can download now from the CacheStats main page.  When you install, your previous version of CacheStats will automatically get replaced (no need to uninstall it first).

Build number 3372.

CacheStats 3.0 is now available. Major changes include a grouping feature where you can group your found caches by specific categories (e.g. by owner or by difficulty), a news page which can display feeds from various geocaching blogs, including this one :-), search capability, and the ability to read the pocket query zip file directly.  Here's the full list of new features:

General

• New user interface has 3 main tabs: news & status, statistics and caches found list
• News page shows feeds from various geocaching blogs and geocaching forums 
• Can now load the zip file from the pocket query (extraction of gpx file isn't required)
• Difficulty/Terrain combinations grid

Cache List Enhancements

• Group by a large variety of categories, e.g. show caches grouped by owner, by month found, by difficulty, etc.  Sort the groups alphabetically or by size of group.
• Show all logs (not just found it logs), plus show log-type icons (e.g. smiley)
• Search names, logs, description for specific text
• Show cache description as html or plain text
• Move identification of FTFs to cache listing tab to make it a more straightforward process
• Show only: FTF's, caches with multiple finds, caches with DNF logs
• Link to Google map showing cache location
• Navigate to owner's profile from cache description

HTML Output Enhancements

• Display non-english characters (e.g. umlaut) correctly
• Show dates for most in day, most in month, etc.
• Ability to open the profile editing page from the copy to clipboard confirmation dialog
• Show Washington D.C. in US map
• Show Canadian provinces in their own section instead of in "other states"
• Show number of finds for each state and country in the locations list

I think that's most of them.  There were several features that I wanted to include that didn't make it into this release due to time constraints.  Hopefully it won't take me as long to get the next release out.  If you've got ideas for new features, feel free to post them here or send an email.