Whistle Stop!

Wassa looks for a place to hide a box on
Plant-a-Letterbox Day.

Yes, once again, whistles are available in the AQ Marketplace while supplies last. =) Nothing new or interesting to report--just the arrival of more whistles!

"What'd you break this time?"

Glad you asked! Pull up a chair and I'll tell you a little about the update I did tonight. It's not actually very exciting and, on the surface at least, any changes you see would probably seem rather superficial. This update deals primarily with the blog code, and anything you find that appears to be broken is most likely to deal with any page or widget that deal with blogs.

And even then, on the surface, the changes seem largely superficial. Underneath the hood, it's been almost completely rewritten. You'll notice that "objects" listed on Atlas Quest such as boxes, trackers, events, groups, virtuals, and themes have a lot of very similar functionality. They all show up on the Advanced Search page, for instance. You can save favorite searches for any of those types of objects, you add each of those objects through a "wizard" that takes you through one or more pages of information. Each object always has a name, attributes, a creation date, and a last modified date. You'll find that you can add notes to boxes, trackers, events, and virtuals. For all of their differences, they have a lot in common.

Which is why, many, many moons ago, I designed a little bit of code that all of these objects are descended from. I implement that functionality once, and it gives everything derived from it all of those powers, and this update moves the whole blogging system under this same umbrella. Blog searches can be run directly from the Advanced Search page, and you'll find there are cute little icons to represent the different types of blogs. You can sort, filter, and chop up the blogs in a hundred different variations, and because it's under this same umbrella with all sorts of useful features readily available, I can easily add the ability to allow notes for blogs, or add tags to blogs--but you currently won't see those as options only because I couldn't think of how they could possibly be useful. But... if there was ever a reason to add such functionality, it would be pretty easy to do.

I spent a lot of work updating all of the blog code to use this standard interface that all these other objects in AQ does, and frankly, none of these advantages are especially compelling for the amount of work it required. The old blog search had one horrible flaw--you were required to include a location of the blog for your search. It was impossible to search for "all blogs" by a certain person, for example. I knew it was a bad thing when I implemented it, but it was quick and easy and a search I figured few people ever used anyhow so I cut corners. I cut a lot of corners with the blog code, and it showed, and this update fixes a lot of those issues.

But still, that wasn't the reason I made this update. Nope, no.... This was actually just a test for a much more important feature I've been developing--a new geocoder. Actually, there are now nine new geocoders at this point, and I'm not sure I'm done making new ones. =)

Premium members already have a hint about some of the things I'm working on--they've had a chance to play around with the new geocoders. The last time I took down AQ for an update, it was to upload the new geocoders, which was installed into the profile locations as the first small step in testing it. Test with a feature that's simple and not particularly important first.

This is step two in the long process of upgrading the geocoder. The profile allowed people to type in their location and use the new geocoder to figure out what it meant. I now needed to actually test that information in a real, honest-to-goodness search. One that's significantly improved over the existing location-based searches. And ultimately, that's what I wanted to do with this update.

Blogs are tied to members, and members can specify their location, so it makes sense you can search for blogs by local letterboxers, and because the member profiles are using the new geocoded information, a search for blogs by people in a certain geographical region would require a search on the new geocoded information.

And if I messed something up terribly--well, better to have problems with the blog searches than with letterbox searches! =)

You can't see distances or locations when you use the location for the search--it didn't seem especially relevant for blog searches--but I've been doing a lot of testing on my development machine with this search. It's pretty cool.

First, you can leave the location blank. In this case, all blogs are returned, regardless of location. (By comparison, the Location-based search on the Advanced Search page, AQ will complain loudly and annoyingly that you must include a location.)

Second, you can type in any city, street, address, park, or zip code. (By comparison, this works exactly like the Location-based search on the Advanced Search page.) If the radius is set to zero, it'll return all boxes with the specified city, street, or whatever. (Not the zip code, though, since zip codes are simply converted into a city internally and a city search is run.)

And finally, you can type in a county, state, or country as the location--and not a city name!--it'll return a list of all blogs owned by people who've registered that county, state, or country as their location. (By comparison, the Advanced Search page can run an area search, but that's actually separate from the location-based search, and even that doesn't have any concept of counties.)

The geocoder is a bit smarter than the old one as well. It's capable of finding thousands of parks that the old geocoder couldn't identify. And it's even more forgiving if you type in latitude and longitude coordinates, allowing commas (the old one required the latitude and longitude to be separated by a space) and allowing N, S, E, and W to be used instead of + or - coordinates. (You do still have to use decimal numbers, though--degrees, minutes, and seconds still won't work.)

All-in-all, it's a huge improvement over the old geocoder. And honestly, the power of the geocoder is being wasted on a mere blog search. =) But like I said, I'm still doing a lot of testing and tweaking, and I'd rather mess around and break a blog search than a letterbox search!

So that's what this update does. In a nutshell, on the surface, it doesn't appear to be much. Eventually, though, when I roll out these updates to the rest of the website.... it's gonna be awesome. *nodding* =)

But.... back to the blogs. I added a new subtype of blog I called "external" to describe blogs that are by people not on Atlas Quest. There are blogs I like to read that aren't by fellow letterboxers, but when I originally created the blog code, I assumed everyone would register their own blog. Obviously, I don't expect the owner of Cake Wrecks (for example) to register an account on Atlas Quest, list their blog, just so I can subscribe to it there. =) It was a huge oversight on my part, and I added the "external" subtype to make up for it. And after I uploaded all of my changes, I registered the Cake Wrecks blog. Now I can see the latest cake disasters between Trekkie Gal's postcards. And really, how cool is that? =)

Black is the New In

The Atlas Quest whistles are back in stock! And there's a new kid on the block--black! I ordered a bit more than I did last time, and assuming those with fast trigger fingers last time got their fill, I hope this batch of whistles lasts at least a bit longer! But admittedly, I would not be surprised if these do sell out relatively quickly, and if they do, I will order more based on whatever colors sell out quickest. So if you do have a favorite color, it's better to order sooner rather than later! It might be another couple of weeks to get another re-order in!

In other news, I just got back from a long cross-country road trip late last night and picked up my mail today. It looks like a lot of them are checks--probably from whistle orders that didn't arrive before I left for the trip. I haven't opened them yet, but if you have sent a payment by check, I probably have it, and I'll try to get those whistle orders in the mail tomorrow. You'll get an AQ mail from me by tomorrow if I have received a check from you. =)

Happy whistling!

-- Ryan

And Your Favorite Color Is....

Wassa Jr. searches high and low for a coveted
purple whistle, but alas, nothing....

PURPLE! Holy cow! I could hardly believe it when I woke up this morning, but the purple whistles are already sold out! And a close runner-up... red, which the time I type this, there is only one left. I wonder if it'll still be there by the time I finish posting this post.

For those of you planning to pay with a check--don't worry--the items are taken out of the inventory count as soon as your reach the invoice page with the payment options. You don't have to worry about not getting your favorite colored whistles just because the payment takes a bit longer to arrive.

The least favorite color: blue. Still have seven of those left, but still, that means I've already sold 18 of them!

And since I only have 12 whistles of all colors left (Really? I sold EIGHTY-EIGHT of these things in about 12 hours?), I will definitely order more whistles today. It'll take at least two or three weeks for me to get another shipment in, though, but there will be more, so don't be too disappointed if you missed your chance. Also, if you pay by check, do send the payment promptly. If I don't get payment within a week or so, I'll cancel the order to make those color whistles available to others.

-- Ryan

Get Your AQ Whistles!

The whistles come in four colors:
blue, green, red, and purple.

A long, long time ago, way back on April 4, 2011, Housepitality Hostess posted to the message boards suggesting an AQ whistle for premium members. I liked the idea of a whistle--it's considered one of the ten essentials by many people and can help in an emergency when cell phone coverage is weak or spotty while out beating the trails in search of letterboxes. I saw no sense in restricting them just for premium members, but I liked the idea of an AQ whistle. So I poked around, looked up several companies that could create custom whistles, got some prices, and decided, hey--this is doable!

So I ordered them, and 100 bright and pretty whistles arrived this afternoon. Amanda grabbed a green one for herself, blew into it, and I can assure you--these things really work well! I ordered 25 in each of four different colors: red, blue, purple, and green.

And they are now available for sale in the AQ Marketplace! If you want one, order yours today! Once I sell out, I'm not sure if I'll order more or not. I guess it depends on how popular they are. I definitely won't be ordering more until I'm running low of all colors--so if you have a favorite color that sells out, there won't be more coming until maybe all of the other colors have sold out as well.

Happy (and safe!) trails!

-- Ryan

The Last Small Update

SURPRISE!!!!! =)

You often hear me talk about the "Next Big Update." I use the term so often, I sometimes even abbreviate it as NBU. Sounds cool that way. =)

Well, I took AQ down this evening for an update, but admittedly, it's not particularly big, but there are a few items worth noting. In essence, it was the "Next Small Update." Or rather, now that the update is in the past, the "Last Small Update."

So what changed? First, if you check out the Letterboxing Preferences, you'll find a few new options. A number of months ago, I added options so you can eliminate boxes that have been abandoned for at least 6 months, boxes that have at least 3 strikeouts, and boxes that haven't been found for the past year. I think those numbers work fairly well, but I know darned well that others may feel differently.

And now--you can change them! Have at it! =)

The only other semi-functional change I can think of--on the Advanced Search page. There are a few new options to search for cemetery boxes, night boxes, rest area boxes, and boxes in historical locations. It's just a glorified clue search and isn't actually new functionality--it just makes it a little quicker and easier to search for specific types of terms. If you search for cemetery boxes, for instance, it'll also search for various derivatives of the term cemetery (e.g. cemeteries) and common misspellings (e.g. cemetary), and related words (e.g. graveyard). It's not a perfect search, and one test showed that about 10% of cemetery searches returned false positives. It'll certainly narrow down such boxes, however!

Those are the only functional change I can think of that was in this update--and that second one isn't even much of a functional change to begin with--but depending on the browser you use, you might see a number of minor cosmetic changes. I've been updating much of the website to use HTML5. There's a lot of cool new stuff available with HTML5, but only the most modern of browsers have relatively decent support for it, and even the most recent browsers don't fully support it. I can mark form fields as being "required," and the form will not submit until you enter data into it.

For instance, take the Advanced Search page. The location-based search requires you to enter a location. In the past, if you submitted the search without a location, it would come back with an error message to enter a location. If you try it now, the form won't even be sent to the AQ server--your browser will stop you. Exactly what it looks like and how the error is handled is dependent on the browser you use. My browser of choice--Firefox 4--highlights the location with a fuzzy, red border and a pop-up box that says, "Please fill out this field."

Another example, also found on that Advanced Search page, is the distance. I've marked it as a "number," and browsers that support it will force you to use a number. Firefox 4, alas, does not do this. I've heard that the latest version of the Opera browser does this, but admittedly, I haven't tried it in that browser. But as browsers are updated with the latest HTML5 support, I expect more and more of the validation to be done by browsers.

Another neat trick I added can also be found on that Advanced Search page. If you take a look at the "Member" option, you might see that the box for member has the word "Trailname" in it. That's a placeholder and disappears when you start typing. I added placeholders all over the place. The box name/number, the clue search, the location, and all over Atlas Quest. Not a big deal--if your browser supports it, you'd likely barely notice the change. But there's another feature of the Members box I want to point out: It's smarter. =)

When AQ sends that member box, it's waiting for you to type a trailname into it. Many websites today are fancy and start trying to predict what you're guessing for. Google searches do this. You type the first letter, and a bunch of common search terms starting with that letter show up in a list just below it that you can select from. Type another letter, and the possible search terms change to use those first two letters. I never implemented something like that because it seemed like too much work for the relatively little gain in slickness.

But with HTML5, I can send a list of trailnames with the box, and if you start typing, it'll give you a list of matching trailnames. It's not quite as slick as Google's search--I have to send all possible trailnames that can be used with the box. There are over 25,000 trailnames on AQ right now, and it's not especially efficient to include 25,000 trailnames every time you want to run a search! But really, whose boxes are you most likely to search for? Friends, of course! So rather than sending every trailname on Atlas Quest, AQ checks your contacts, your exchanges, and people you've AQ mailed and received AQ mail from, and sends just those trailnames. Chances are, whoever you're search for is going to be one of those names.

This effect works in Firefox 4, but I don't think it works with IE9 if I remember correctly. I've been trying all of these cosmetic features with all sorts of browsers--Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and I never really kept track of what worked with each browser. From what I've read and tested, Opera seems to have the best HTML5 support. (Not perfect, but still the best.) Chrome and Safari have generally excelled at support for HTML5 for quite some time. Only the very latest versions of Firefox and IE have any support for HTML5 (Firefox 4 and IE 9). IE 9 still has a lot to be desired. Firefox 4 I think is pretty good. But one thing I like about IE9--you can finally see the rounded corners! AQ looks so much better with rounded corners. (If you use IE9 and don't see rounded corners, take the browser out of the "compatibility" view.)

I'm having a lot of fun exploring HTML5. You'll likely see additional such tweaks over time, but the changes are largely cosmetic in nature and not particularly noteworthy for the most part. I won't be posting about them again in the future. =)

So there you have it. That's what was in this update. (At least the visible changes.)

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

Calendar Photo Reminder!

Wassa Jr. says to tell everyone hi. =)

Have you been out letterboxing all winter, slogging through snow, mud, and the worst that the elements can throw at you? Then certainly you've got a few nice winter photos to submit for the annual AQ letterboxing calendar! If you're new to this, you can read all about it in the Project X link from the Marketplace menubar option.

And whether you are new or not, be sure to submit your photos now! Yes, the deadline isn't for months away, but those who wait until the last minute often can't find the photos they want to upload or submit them just a bit too late. Get it done now, then head out and start finding those perfect spring photos!

Those Nagging Little Details....

I just uploaded a few tweaks to Atlas Quest this afternoon, and this one is so minor, it's probably not even going to be noticed by anyone. So, I'd like to bring your attention to it, if for no other reason than to let you know what I've been up to and, perhaps, catch any defects that I might have introduced.

In this case, an example might be the easiest way to explain this tweak. Take a look at this search of San Luis Obispo, CA, sorted alphabetically. The #2 entry is for the "Beach Vacation Series"--the quotes are part of the box name, not me quoting the box name. In the old days (that is, before today), Atlas Quest would sort boxes on a character-by-character basis, and because quotes come before letters, it would have shown as the first box. Now, quotes (and other punctuation marks) are ignored, so the box is now correctly placed after the A from All the News That's Fit to Print.

A related issue are box names that start with "useless" words--the, and, a, etc. In the old days (that is, before today), a box named The Building would have been sorted under the T's. If you check those search results, however, you'll now see it listed along with the other B's, where it should be.

Number 12 in the search results is called A Dragon in the Library: Adelinde. In the old days, it would have shown up in the A's. Today? Nope, not anymore.... It's with the other Ds.

Because punctuation marks are ignored, you'll also find that words like dogs and dog's map to the same word pattern. In the old days, a search for either of those words wouldn't find both of them. You can see this happen in a global search for boxes with the word dogs. In my results, the first six use the word dogs, but #7 uses the word dog's.

In another slight tweak in the search results, in this search for Winter Falls, you'll find none of the first several entries use the word winter. Why would they rank so highly, then? Because it's part of a series, and one of the boxes in the series use the word winter. If you click on the Silver Falls series, it ranks highly because there's a box within the series named Winter Falls. In the old days, AQ was not able to match words in the names of individual boxes within a series--but now it should!

Anyhow, these are minor little tweaks, but I'm a little concerned I've overlooked something. If you happen to notice any search results that aren't quite as expected or find an unexpected glitch, do let me know! Thanks! =)

New Edition of the Letterboxer's Companion!

It only took eight years, but the second edition of The Letterboxer's Companion is finally out! =) I was going to write a book review of it--I got my grubby little hands on it several weeks ago, and I've never officially written a "book review" before. But now that the book is officially out, I find myself mired with other more important things to work on. *grumble grumble* Stupid bugs.... Seems like I've been hit with a number of difficult-to-fix issues recently, and I'm still working through the problems. (Fortunately, for the most part, the problems aren't that obvious, so most of you surfing Atlas Quest probably don't even know about them! But they're there, and they do need to get fixed.)

But I will say, I like this edition better than the first one. It's smaller, lighter, and a little more portable. Cheaper too--it's paperback! =) (There's even a Kindle version this time!) I read the book, from cover to cover, and it's certainly been updated with a lot of information about Atlas Quest that wasn't there before--mostly because Atlas Quest didn't exist when the first edition came out. There's a bit more detail about how to work the LbNA website as well.

Amanda had a copy of the first edition hidden away and I flipped through them both looking for anything that was different, and they were actually more alike than I remembered. Reading the second edition, it seemed like it had a lot more information about carving stamps than I remembered, but as it turned out--not really. Just my imagination playing tricks on me. *shrug*

There are a couple of places where new material was added. In the chapter of Advanced Techniques, Mapsurfer (a.k.a. Randy Hall) added a bit about book codes, which had me hunting through the book to solve an example one provided where the book code used his own book--a teasing message, but I'll let you solve that yourself. ;o) Then he describes "Other Codes and Ciphers," explaining what cryptograms are and an example of the Freemason's cipher (or "pig-pen cipher"). He describes what these codes are, but he doesn't actually explain how one would go about solving them--instead suggesting to the reader to research the ciphers on the Internet. Well, I suppose one could make a case for "teaching a man to fish" rather than "giving a man a fish," but still, it seems lazy to show these codes then not explain how to solve them. There are still plenty of other codes and ciphers to research on the Internet. Revealing the secrets of some of the most commonly used ones or a short section of letter frequencies would have been convenient.

There's a whole chapter on "Internet Resources" that been expanded greatly. The original book had a section called "Internet Resources," but I guess there wasn't enough material then to actually call it a chapter in its own right. It's now been upgraded to a full chapter in the second edition. Considering how much of our hobby is Internet based, it's a well-deserved upgrade.

Anyhow, the book was officially released March 1st. I looked on Amazon.com's website and they say that only 7 are left in stock (but more are on the way). Looks like it's already become a best seller! =)

For any serious letterboxer, you probably won't learn anything new from this book. But I still like it. It's small, compact, and light. And if you know someone who might be interested in letterboxing, this book could be the perfect gift. And who knows.... if a lot of people start using this edition as a code book for their clues, you might need the book just to find some letterboxes! ;o)

Sub-Accounts Have Arrived!

I think I got the first request for a "sub-account" about two days after Atlas Quest went live. Okay, maybe it was three. It seemed like so long ago now. =) The main motivation, in particular, was the desire for a 'family' account--a way to identify oneself individually and as part of a family.

And I've never really been sure how to implement something like that. There's a lot of stuff to think about, and the logistics just thinking about it would give me a headache, so I put it off. And put it off. And put it off.

And while hiking the PCT, I thought about it some more and decided that if this feature would ever happen, I needed to actually DO something and play around with it. So shortly after I finished the trail, I followed through with the first step: Adding a column to the database that would do nothing more than point to a "parent" account. The master account. The family account. The primary account. Whatever you call it. It didn't actually DO anything, but it gave Atlas Quest a way to identify a simple relationship between to accounts.

And over the last couple of months, I've added a piece here and there--real functionality. First the ability to log into a sub-account using the password from the primary account. Then the ability for the master account to edit boxes and trackers if it was owned by the sub-account. Then the ability to read mail from sub-accounts through the primary account. And so on. A lot of little incremental improvements that, today, is quite a substantial feature in it's own right.

So now, you'll see a new link under the 'My Page' menubar option called 'My Accounts.' This is where you can control all of your accounts from one convenient location. =)

There are three distinctly different types of sub-accounts:

• Aliases: Your alter egos, if you have any. Something like the Mystery Mailer would be an alias for a real person. Registering an alias with your primary account will allow you to post messages and send AQ mail from your aliases without having to log into your alias accounts.
• Child: Child accounts are for the children in your family--typically those who aren't old enough to have their own accounts. Child accounts have additional restrictions that will not permit them to post to the message boards, send AQ mail, or drop into the chat rooms. Child accounts are generally only meant to record finds that your children have found--they don't really need all those other features. When recording finds, you'll be able to record finds on child accounts at the same time.
• Adult: These are like the child accounts, but without the restrictions.

Each of the categories do have slightly different characteristics, so it does make a difference which you choose for each sub-account. The list above focuses on what makes the types different, but they also have a lot in common.

While logged into the sub-account, everything works like it always has. You won't see any changes. The real power lies in the primary account. The password for the primary account can log you into any of the sub-accounts. You can also reset the passwords for the sub-accounts from the primary account. And like I said before, you can edit the boxes, trackers, events, etc. of sub-accounts directly from the primary account. The primary account is also capable of reading the AQ mail of any attached sub-accounts.

There's also a new widget for My Page for sub-accounts. If you plan to make use of this feature, you'll probably want to add the Sub-Accounts widget.

Happy trails!