LonelyCache

Previously:

Corfman Clan wrote:

rocketsciguy wrote:That's awesome! Thanks Russell (and Redfist) for all your hard work to date, and thanks greenskeeper and bikephotog for being so quick to sponsor! It's exciting to know that it's just around the corner. Since you're building data from the Live API now, I think it would be pretty interesting to see the site flesh itself out as the database builds on its skeleton base. Each day you'd have radical changes in Point value and Leaderboards. (hint hint) It would be really interesting to see it.

Things aren't going to be changing as quickly as one might think. I set the database in such a way that every cache is ready for a full update. That is, all the logs will be retrieved for every cache. Doing this will just happen to pick older caches first. (They aren't being sorted so I'm not sure why, it just does. Maybe because the primary key is the cache ID). We already have most of the logs for the old caches, so those won't be changing much. Also, Groundspeak limits the API call for fetching logs to 200 calls per hour with up to 30 logs per call. With 4 accounts, I'm getting 800 calls an hour. Some of those old caches have a lot of logs too. So after a day, a bit over 4000 caches are fully updated. New caches will be added with pocket queries but then, those caches won't be updated until all the older caches have been. So, it's going to take awhile. The system also has a lot to do so I have my doubts on whether the stats will be updated too, though I can manually start that as I want.

The other night, I was having some beers with jcanyoneer & azcampbell and we got to talking about this. Jcanyoneer mentioned something about updating the caches with less logs first - the caches with lots of logs really don't matter as much anyway (they're less lonely). I mulled it over and thought why not, it's easy enough to change. So now the site will pick caches sorted first by how long it's been since the last update (never is at the top of the list), and next by how many logs we have (this will favor recently added caches). This should make the statistics converge to something meaningful sooner than later.

I also adjusted the algorithm that decides when the stats are updated. Previously it would only run when all caches are up to date. In theory, I think that's a good idea but in practice there are some problems. Namely, if the accounts that access the Geocaching.com Live API to update caches have reached their daily quota there will be caches that are out of date, but cannot be updated. Also, there are API call limitations in place with the API and the site may need to throttle back accessing the API. So again, there may be close to an hour where there are caches that are out of date but cannout be updated. So now, if it is time to update the stats, then if all the caches are up to date or if caches cannot be updated, then the stats are updated.

As of right now:
The site has 95,953 caches. Of those, 18,366 have been updated. We also have 5,332,322 found logs and 144,256 geocachers.

Really cool. Anyword on when you plan make something visible. Even if it is a work in progress.

BEER always seems to spark good ideas! Isn't that how we got to the moon?

We all appreciate all the time you have put into this! Sounds consuming to me! Maybe you should take a vacation?

jcanyoneer wrote:BEER always seems to spark good ideas! Isn't that how we got to the moon?

We all appreciate all the time you have put into this! Sounds consuming to me! Maybe you should take a vacation?

A vacation sounds great, I'm leaving Friday for a country that has 190 geocaches and several that have never been found.

firennice wrote:Really cool. Anyword on when you plan make something visible. Even if it is a work in progress.

Shortly after I get back from vaction, we'll allow access to several of you for beta testing. I don't think it's practical to start before then and I really won't have the time to set it up either.

Corfman Clan wrote:As of right now:
The site has 95,953 caches. Of those, 18,366 have been updated. We also have 5,332,322 found logs and 144,256 geocachers.

As of right now:
The site has 100,476 caches. Of those, 26,169 have been updated. We also have 5,486,070 found logs and 145,473 geocachers.

As of right now:
The site has 103,085 caches. Of those, 39,734 have been updated. We also have 5,961,368 found logs and 147,327 geocachers.

how do you volunteer for Beta Testing? sounds interesting.

desert dawg wrote:how do you volunteer for Beta Testing? sounds interesting.

Consider your name on the list.

Again, we'll start up some form of beta testing shortly after I get back from vacation; probably around mid July.

As of a few minutes ago:
The site has 103,081 caches. Of those, 42,966 have been updated. We also have 6,195,101 found logs and 147,533 geocachers.

You may have noticed that that's a few geocaches less than this morning. A lot of geocaches that we added from the Geocaching.com staging database have been archived and those are being removed from the DB as the site attempts to update them. I expect the number of geocaches to drop below 101,000 as things continue to get more up to date.

As of right now:
The site has 103,079 caches. Of those, 44,224 have been updated. We also have 6,268,554 found logs and 147,906 geocachers.

I would like to be a tester if that's possible.

the greenskeeper wrote:I would like to be a tester if that's possible.

You're on the list.

If anyone else is interested in helping, let us know here.

Corfman Clan wrote:As of right now:
The site has 103,079 caches. Of those, 44,224 have been updated. We also have 6,268,554 found logs and 147,906 geocachers.

One last update before I leave town. It will be strange being out of country on the 4th of July.

As of right now:
The site has 103,054 caches. Of those, 47,281 have been updated. We also have 6,439,370 found logs and 147,996 geocachers.

I got back from vacation earlier today and just checked how things have been updating while I was gone.

As of right now:
The site has 106,601 caches. Of those, 59,879 have been updated. We also have 7,466,868 found logs and 149,647 geocachers.

I'm surprised at the number of geocaches, I wasn't expecting them to increase. I'll have to figure out where they're coming from (Actually, where my spreadsheet isn't counting them).

I also figured we would be farther along with getting up to date. I knew things would slow down when I was away, but not as much as it did. Things actually run better when the website is being accessed and when I was gone, it wasn't being accessed nearly so much. Yes, that's a good reason to kick off beta testing sooner than later...

As of right now:
The site has 105,476 caches. Of those, 69,346 have been updated. We also have 7,626,212 found logs and 150,605 geocachers.

As of right now:
The site has 104,486 caches. Of those, 77,031 have been updated. We also have 7,723,400 found logs and 148,614 geocachers.

The reason that the number of geocachers decreased is because I deleted 2,971 of them that were not being referenced.

As of right now:
The site has 103,978 caches. Of those, 81,015 have been updated. We also have 7,789,492 found logs and 149,218 geocachers.

78% done! Awesome!
I check this everyday with anticipation! Thanks for the updates Corfy!

jcanyoneer wrote:78% done! Awesome!
I check this everyday with anticipation! Thanks for the updates Corfy!

If you continue to call me Corfy, I think I'll stop giving the updates

As of right now:
The site has 103,604 caches. Of those, 83,519 have been updated. We also have 7,823,933 found logs and 149,590 geocachers.

Just for fun, here's the top ten finds from the past 30 days:

Corfman Clan wrote:Just for fun, here's the top ten finds from the past 30 days:

Code: Select all

Finder         Code     Cache                                      State     Owner           Pts    Log Date
-------------  -------  -----------------------------------------  --------  --------------  -----  ----------
...
BFin           GC1G9BK  home sweet home                            Utah      gregga          127.2  2012-06-24
...

Pffbt! (or some approximation of that) Looks like Barb is doing some armchair caching. I know she writes copy-and-paste logs, but this one just doesn't feel adequate for a 800-1000 ft climb with a very steep portion at the end over a 2+ mile hike. Let's compare her log:

BFin wrote:06/24/2012
Decided to take a Sunday drive up to the Uintahs. We havent been up that way in years. We had forgotten how beautiful it is up there. Found a few caches while on our drive. Thanks sl

with BikePhotog's from a year earlier:

BikePhotog wrote:06/14/2011
Wow, I have dreamed of this one. I have picked JC's brain on where to park. Today I put all that stuff to rest. What an awesome hike followed up with a death march to the summit. The best part of this day was the cougar tracks in the mud about a tenth of a mile past the gate. That kept me on my toes until I parked the cachemobile in my driveway. There was still a bunch of snow on the trail, and where there was no snow, there was water. Thanks for the adventure! BP

And the cache owner is 4 years inactive. Grumble.... I love seeing these kinds of stats, but I knew I would recognize more and more of these, uh, curiosities, that make me steam a little.