The Easiest Boxes on Atlas Quest!

 

So I've heard the complaints for years about people going out to hunt down a several boxes and coming home with absolutely nothing to show for their efforts. It's frustrating and annoying, and I've been pondering for years how to help alleviate that problem... and the solution has finally arrived!

This feature will have you turning your frowns into smiles
and turbo-charging your F-counts!!! Angel Winks gives the
feature one thumb up, but only because she's holding a
letterbox she found with the other thumb!

Now, every box on AQ goes through a complex calculation to determine how likely you are to find a specific box. It takes in all sorts of data including (but not necessarily limited to):

• The status of the box
• How many strikes it has
• How long its been since it was found
• Your previous success rate at finding boxes (the find vs. attempt ratio)
• The success rate previous people have found finding the given box
  
• Your experience level
• If you often have help finding boxes
• How recently the clue has been updated
• How long the box has been known to survive
• The rating people have given the box
• Keywords used in the comments for the box (lots of cuss words, for instance, means that it was probably hard to find or that it wasn't found at all)
  
• Last login date of the person who owns the box
• How many people and who is ignoring the box
• Local weather conditions for the box
• Whether fires or floods have affected the area recently
  

It's a pretty extensive list--part of the reason it's taken me so long to implement. That, and I needed a little refresher course for calculus to make sure the regression analysis is correct. It's been a long time since I needed to use calculus for anything--and it annoys the heck of me that my high school calculus teacher was right when he said I'd be using this stuff in the future. (I argued that it was pointless--there's no way I'd ever need calculus in "real life." But I'm sure Mr. Cross is getting the last laugh now.)

But I digress.... 

A small sub-set of premium members have been helping test the new feature for the past month or two to make sure it actually worked well. AQ would predict the changes of them finding a box, then they'd report their successes and failures and compared it to AQ's predictions. Even I was surprised at the results with a 99.92% success rate! (And I'm still not entirely convinced that Wassa didn't sabotage the one "alleged" failure.)

I realize that some people might be offended if their box is labeled as "impossible" to find because people are too stupid to understand their clues or whatever the case may be, so I planned ahead and group the boxes into easy-to-understand categories that nobody would find offensive:

• Incredibly easy: These boxes, if you choose to look for them, will have a high chanced of being there and the likelihood of finding it are better than 90%.
• Super easy: These boxes, if you choose to look for them, will still have a chance of being found, but the chances of success might have fallen below 90%.
• Very easy: These boxes, if you choose to look for them, will still have a chance of being found, but perhaps a little less than a super easy box. (Maybe somewhere south of 85%.)
• Easy: These boxes will be the hardest ones to find, and the chances of success might be below 80%.

Another successful hunt by Angel Winks and LaLaBirds!

I've also added a handy-dandy widget which I've added to everyone's My Page which shows the easiest-to-find box on all of Atlas Quest! If you want as close to a sure thing when you go out to find a box, the one listed in the widget is the way to go. There's a better than 99.999% chance of finding the easiest-box-on-AQ. If you've provided your location in your Account Info, then you'll also be provided the easiest-to-find box within 50 miles of your location that will give you at least a 90% success rate. Unfortunately, for sparely populated areas of the country (or world), there may not be any boxes that AQ determines will have at least a 90% success rate of you finding. If the perfect option if you find yourself with some extra time and want to know what box within easy driving distance is the easiest one to find with the highest likelihood of success.

AQ automatically detects even the tiniest changes in the rankings for all boxes every 1/1000th of a second so you never have to worry about the data being out-of-date. Unless, of course, you consider something less than 1/1000th of a second as "out of date."

Anyhow.... you'll see the results of this feature scattered all over the place. They'll show up in several places:

• On the Advanced Search page, premium members can sort boxes based on how easy they are to find.
• On a page of search results, you'll see each box color-coded based on how easy it is to find. It's also listed as text for our color blind members. (If the listing is a series, it'll use the results of the easiest-to-find box within the series for the entire series.)
  
• On the box details page, you'll see detailed information about how easy the box is to find including the precise chance that you can find the box, and the degree of certainty with a 99% confidence level. (Scroll down to the Series Details information since different boxes within a series may have different results.)
• On the clue page, it'll just display what category of easiness the box is located in.
• And, of course, there's the widget on My Page.

A big shout out to everyone who helped (and Wassa) for testing and giving feedback on the feature! I'll accept any and all praise for the feature. Any faults, if you happen to find any, are the fault of the testers for not finding the problem.

 

"My fingers have never been clean since I started testing this feature!"

-- Wise Wanderer

 

Reserved Boxes and Statuses

Well that last big update for Atlas Quest went swimmingly, didn't it? =)

Now that I'm done hiking the Pacific Northwest Trail and have a bit a time, I've been revisiting the update, considering the feedback I've gotten about it and made a few tweaks. They're relatively minor this time around, though.

First, the concept of "reserved" boxes has largely been retired. When you start listing a new box, you won't find an option to mark your box as reserved--because it'll automatically be reserved until you explicitly "publish" the box. So reserved boxes still exist...you just don't "opt-in" to them like before.

And when it comes to adding or editing boxes, trackers, events, etc., I've decided on a naming convention that's consistent across all types of objects. On the "main editing" page--the page that shows at a glance all of the existing settings for the object in question--you'll see buttons to "Publish", "Save" or "Cancel."

You'll see three options when adding a new box: publish, save and cancel. "Publish" will list your box publicly and make it searchable on Atlas Quest. Use "Save" to store the box as a reserved box. And "Cancel," of course, will cancel the transaction.

As you might guess, "Publish" will make your box/tracker/event/etc. and any data you've edited publicly available for all to see.

"Save" will only show up on boxes (not trackers, events, etc.) and will save the data to the database permanently, but the box will not be public until it's published. It is basically the "reserved" box from before. It only shows up for boxes because there's currently no support for "reserved" trackers, events, etc. If I ever add support to save unpublished trackers and events, you might see a "Save" button on those objects in the future. But for now, only boxes can be saved.

And the "Cancel" button is pretty self-explanatory. It ignores any data you've changed and throws it out.

The pages to edit individual pieces of data will have a "continue" and "cancel" button. The cancel button, once again, is self-evident. The "continue" button will save any changes you've made temporarily and return you to the main editing page where you can "publish" the changes (or "save" them if that option is available). 

The 'edit data' pages will either take you back to the main editing page or cancel the current transaction on the specified page--but information is NOT saved permanently until you click either the "Publish" or "Save" button on the main editing page.

 

Hopefully, these changes will help people avoid accidentally publishing unfinished listings which seemed to be a big issue after the update.

You will also be able to add plant dates to reserved boxes--but if you try to publish a box with a "future" date, it will convert into the current date. It will not allow you to list a plant date in the future for an active box! For a reserved box, yes, but not for active ones.

And finally, this next tweak allows you to edit a box, but from outside of the "edit box" pages. You'll find an option to edit the status of the entire series at once on the main details page of your box. Click the "edit" icon next to the "status" title of the series details section.

You'll then be taken to a page to select which status everything should be change to--as well as the opportunity to not include selected boxes in the update. Hopefully some of you folks with large series that need to be retired such as after an event will find this feature a huge help. =)

And that's about it for this update. It's a relatively minor update that I hope clears up some of the confusion and frustrations that were there before. =)

Happy trails!

How to List a Letterbox

So I created the newest video tutorial for Atlas Quest: How to List a Letterbox. Whether you're a letterboxing newbie learning how to use AQ or an experienced boxer who feels overwhelmed with the recent redesign of the add/edit box pages, you're bound to find a useful tip or two.

You might find some of the tips helpful for editing a letterbox as well since the processes are largely the same. The main difference is that when you edit a box, you aren't required to add a box name or type up front since those have already been added. Or you can watch the video to admire my relatively newly-shaved head. =)

Hope you get a lot of use out of it! Have more questions or comments or suggestions for future video tutorials, post a comment below! =)

Video Tutorials!

So earlier in the week, it was suggested that I create some video tutorials--an idea which I absolutely LOVE! Even if for no other reason than I can talk to myself and not have anyone interrupt. =)

My first video was How To List a Bonus Box.

And today, you can learn how to use the trip planner! This describes a premium member perk so if you aren't a premium member, it won't be very helpful. (But if you want to see what premium members can do--maybe you will be interested?)

I'll likely be creating more of these over time.... have any requests? Comment below! Or on the message boards! Or email me. Or something.... I can't promise I'll make a video about every topic that's suggested, but I'll keep a list to work on.

The Biggest Update You've Never Seen!

Would you believe... I was looking for a letterbox?

So I took Atlas Quest down for about 20 minutes to complete a huge update on the website! Which... you probably won't notice anything different because absolutely nothing looks different as far as I can think of.

Much of the update involves upgrading software so, theoretically, things will run faster and better and more securely. Which involved updating the code on... well, all of my websites. I've been doing updates to them all: The Soda Can Stove, Backcountry Water, Ryan's a Total Goober, Walking 4 Fun, etc.

But those updates I could do with no downtime at all and absolutely nobody noticed anything different. =)

The update for AQ was a bit more complicated, however, which required a bit of downtime.

But there is one small update that's awesome! Okay, it's small-scale awesome--but it fixes one of those minor issues that has bugged me for years.

When you upload an image, it'll actually be right-side up! All of the time! =)

For a portrait-framed (vertical) photo taken with your smartphone--such as this one of me climbing a tree--it would invariably show up sideways when you uploaded it to AQ. It's been on my to-do list to update the clue page so you could rotate the image manually as needed, but until then, you had to open the photo in some sort of photo-editing software and re-save the photo (even though you might not have changed anything) before uploading the photo to make it right-side up.

But now it's no longer necessary because it should auto-rotate and appear right-side up without any additional input. Yeah! Just in time for the mass of boxes to be published for Plant-a-Letterbox day! =)

I should also point out... this will NOT fix photos that have already been uploaded and left in the sideways position. Only newly uploaded photos will be auto-corrected.

In other news, given how much has changed with this update, it's entirely possible that there are some bugs that have found their way in. If you stumble across them, let me know and please be patient as I try to get them fixed! Thanks!

-- Ryan

It's a bug! But please don't report this one.... This one was put here deliberately! =)

Auto-cryptograms are bigger and better!

Just kidding.... as most of you undoubtedly realized, the auto-cryptograms was an April Fools prank. Fun times, right? =)

As I write this, it's actually early February. I'm planning a trip to Jordan to hike the Jordan Trail and hopefully I'm there having a good time. I'll be there for nearly two months, however, through all of March and half of April and knew months in advance that I likely wouldn't be able to get online on April Fools Day to participate actively in the prank. So I set up the code to automatically start "encrypting" clues on April 1st (and only April 1st) and announce the auto-cryptogram feature... automatically. So the prank is all lined up to go before I even step foot in Jordan.

It'll be interesting to read the message boards and my AQ mail when I get online again! But like I said... I'll probably be in the middle of nowhere when this post goes live and when you read this, I'll probably still be clueless how of well the prank was received. (Or maybe it wasn't well received?)

Happy trails!

Auto-cryptograms have arrived!

There have been.... complaints, I guess you could say, that there are too many drive-by letterboxes with little thought or effort put into them. Mostly thrown out in the wild so one can show they were there or get an "official" plant in a certain state, county or even country. And that's fine, but finders want something fun! Interesting!

And it really doesn't take a lot of effort to do so. Copy and paste a clue into about a million different websites and get an instant coded clue! Which everyone love to love! A pretty typical, forgettable box suddenly becomes an interesting puzzle that can gives hours of solving pleasure!

So I created an option to turn any clue into a cryptogram! This has the added effect of hiding the clues from search engines which, of course, is a good thing. There's nothing more annoying that someone who finds your clue from a Google search then tries to blackmail you for using a "trademark" without their permission or whatever.

But wait! There's more! Solving a cryptogram over and over again can get a little boring so I created several different fonts for cryptograms for a bit more variety. You can use normal letter replacements like usual... or! You can use letters from other alphabets. Want your clue to look Greek? Not a problem! Use the Greek alphabet! Want to make your spy-theme box look a little more spy-like? Use the Cyrillic alphabet and people will think it's a secret Russian message!

There are also options to make your clue look Chinese, but they don't really have an "alphabet" per se so it uses symbols in place of letters which represent words like honesty and integrity and... well, I don't remember them all anymore off the top of my head. I think golf ball was one of the words, though, because who doesn't like golf?

I also added an option for the Pigpen cipher if you want your coded message to actually look like a secret code!

I plan to add more options in the future--the sky's the limit here! Have any suggestions? I'd love to hear them.

To get things started, I went ahead and turned all the clues for drive-by boxes into cryptograms so at least there's a small challenge involved to find the boxes. Hope you enjoy them! =)

Logbook Tweaking!

So some of you might have noticed that I took AQ down for about 15 minutes. Yes, it's the latest and greatest of updates! Actually, this update is pretty minor, but it was a lot easier to do the update while the site was down.

This update mostly involved the logbooks. The main goal this time around was to battle slow queries. There are a growing number of people with well over 10,000 finds to their names and AQ was struggling to show pages of those logbooks. It would literally take the database over 10 seconds to create the page showing the finds. If you clicked through to see page 2 of the results, it would take another 10+ seconds to generate. A website that "hangs" for over 10 seconds at a time is problematic! It's probably not a problem you noticed often because most people don't have enough finds to cause such issues and it's not very often that people look at logbooks for people with that many finds--maybe AQ would record half-dozen such slow queries in a day. But... it's a problem that grows increasingly worse as the number of people with large number of finds grow, and I was determined to fix it. As a whole, I prefer the pages on AQ to take less than 1 second to generate. (By comparison, most queries take about 1/1000th of a second to run, and even the slower ones rarely take more than half a second.)

So.... AQ's logbook now includes a dropdown list with years that you've found boxes and will show a list of all of the finds from that year. It runs a lot faster this way! It also won't paginate the finds. Whether there is 1 find or 5000 finds, they'll all be displayed. Which--if the number of finds is in the thousands is a bit unwieldy, but paginated finds were unwieldy already and good luck trying to figure out which page had a particular box you were looking for. At least with everything on one page, you can search the page with your browser to find a particular listing.

I figure that most of the time, people are interested in recent listings so the default setting isn't to show a specific year at all. Instead, it'll display the most recent 500 matches. Which means if you have less than 500 finds, all of your finds will be on that one page. If you have more than 500 finds, only the first 500 that match your sort will be displayed. But if you know the find was from last year (for instance), it might be easier to view the smallest list from last year.

The update was mostly meant to target the finds since that's where people have (literally) tens of thousands of entries which was causing the slow queries, but the same code runs the pages showing your plants, adoptions, attempts, carves, donations, etc. so the year option now shows up for all of them and the same rules applies. The logbook pages for exchanges, tracker signups, event signups, photo albums and.... why does it seem like I'm forgetting one? Anyhow, those non-box searches use different code and therefore don't have the year filtering option.

Make sense?

If you don't see the rows numbered, do a browser refresh. I updated the CSS and if your browser is using a cached CSS page, you won't see the numbers. Or ignore it and probably within a few days they'll eventually show up on their own when your browser refreshes the CSS.

Happy trails!

-- Ryan, keeping AQ running fast since 2004

I lived, I breathed, and I survived....

I heard rumors that something happened last weekend? Did anyone else hear anything?

Oh! Live and Breathe XX?! Yes, I almost forgot.... NOT! =)

So Amanda and I flew out to Austin. Being the capital of Texas, we assumed it was a good-sized city with well-established infrastructure, so we were a bit surprised to learn that the tap water was considered unsafe to drink. But we weren't going to let a bit of bad water scare us off. Absolutely not! It's not a problem that a little bottled water can't solve.

And then we heard that some of the trails at the event were flooded and boxes were under a few feet of water. Whaaat?! But still, we were not deterred. The event would go on, and we would be there!

Amanda flew out a couple of days before me, but she experienced further difficulties when her flight was diverted to Tuscon (it was supposed to land in Phoenix) because of storms. She arrived the next day, a day later than expected but still in time to pick me up from the Austin airport when I landed another day later. My flight, I'm happy to report, went swimmingly. Or perhaps I should avoid terms like "swimmingly" when water is unsafe to drink and letterboxes are flooding? But my flights went well, despite a tight connection that gave me a mere 15 minutes between flights in Phoenix. Nailed it!

At the airport, Amanda picked me up, along with Princess Lea and Fleetwood7 and whisked us away to a nearby park to find some boxes. And we found boxes--including some that we weren't looking for and one that not only were we not looking for, but had been retired! That was a good start. *nodding*

The next day, we drove out to Bastrop and the scene of Live and Breathe XX. We arrived before check-in time, but that didn't stop us from hunting around the property looking for boxes. The rumors of flooded trails were true, but only the trails immediately next to the Colorado River (no, not that Colorado River) were flooded and closed--which was a very small part of the park. Most boxes were alive and well--albeit might require traversing through a fair amount of mud to reach.

The setup was gorgeous! A large Texas-themed banner welcomed everyone and signs directed everyone to the registration table. A small western town had been erected--which I thought was a permanent installation but I later found out was a creation headed by NLW. Wow! Gorgeous! 

This was a covered wagon custom-built for this event!

Others started joining us in the hunt, faces both familiar and unfamiliar. I let Amanda do all of the planning for this event and never even looked at the attendees list. I had absolutely no idea who I might run into, and it was fun being surprised with some of the faces that did pop up.

We finally checked in and got our official clue books and the hunt for boxes began in earnest. Amanda and I left for a bit during the afternoon to check into a hotel nearby and when we got back, we ran into Eidolon (and friends!) who told us that they had signed up for night boxing with us that night. Oh boy.... For any of you who've heard stories of Eidolon and I nightboxing together at the western New York gathering a number of years back, you know that you don't want to be the group following us. We bring out the worst of each other. ;o)

The whole weekend was well-organized and a joy. Temperatures were warm and humid--especially in the late afternoon--but not enough to stop people from going out. When I became hot and tired of the heat, I'd head back to the dining hall or hang out in the shade around the buildings nearby. The water issues in Austin didn't extend to Bastrop so I had plenty of tap water to drink.

On Saturday, Open Space--who spearheaded the event and did a wonderful job--gave a logbook-making presentation which I attended. I grabbed the logbook she made for a sample for my own use. The logbook I had brought, after less than 24 hours, was already more than half full and I didn't have a spare. Now I had one and I hoped it would last the rest of the event! (It did... barely....)

I also made a couple of more logbooks for future use. They're gorgeous! And I was happy that I could make my mess at the event instead of at home where I usually made my messes.

Afterwards, Open Space was occupied with other event duties and I got to help a few people create their own logbooks. Including Silver Eagle, who seemed to enjoy the machinery even though he confessed to not being into arts and crafts. Not normally, at least!

There was also a station to make your own postcards. We were given postcard-sized cardstock and a bunch of stamps and Amanda and I both made quite a few postcards. Our registration packs included stamps for one postcard (each), but we brought a lot more postcard stamps since we were planning to send store bought postcards anyhow. A few of you might be finding some of our creations in your mailbox in the next few days if they haven't arrived already.

I missed the carving demo, which I'm a little disappointed about. I heard it was awesome and later regretted that I missed it. So much to do, and just one weekend wasn't enough to do it all!

There were two nightboxing series to do, and Eidolon was there with me for both of them, but we largely behaved ourselves. I don't think anyone who came after us wound up cussing us out. At least not for our antics there!

Our last night there, we played letterboxing bingo! That was a lot of fun. Our registration packs included an empty bingo card which we filled in with 24 out of 51 hand-carved Texas-themed stamps. The only slight hiccup--some of the local teams and imagery we didn't know, so Silver Eagle had to describe many of the stamps. Everyone that played bingo now knows all of the sports teams in Texas! Well, okay, maybe not all of them, but definitely the ones the bingo board covered. (I was an armadillo away from winning too. Just one armadillo! Was that too much to ask?! *shaking head*)

After the event, Amanda and I drove out to San Antonio to check out the Alamo. I'd never been there before, and most of Texas is completely new country for me. My sole visit (not including stuff like changing planes in Houston or Dallas or driving on the Interstate through the panhandle) had been a couple of days in Dallas so the Austin area was all new for me--and I loved it! It was awesome! Bastrop, Austin and San Antonio. Thanks so much to everyone who organized the event and so many others who donated stamps and materials. The results were amazing!

I'm now sitting at the airport in Austin as I type this, waiting for my flight home. I saw in the paper yesterday that the drinking water ban had been lifted, but apparently they haven't gotten the memo at the airport because all of the water fountains and bottle-filling stations are still turned off with warnings that the water isn't safe to drink. *sigh*

But hey, that's just part of the adventure! =)

Another Day, Another Big Update!

Yet again, I'm ready for the Next Big Update. This is a massive update that has the potential to break break all sorts of unexpected things, but hopefully I've tested it thoroughly enough that y'all only find minor problems.

But for as massive as this update is, you probably won't notice much that's changed. The majority of the changes are under the hood. But there are a few things I'll point out:

* You'll find a few cosmetic changes here and there. You might have to do a "page refresh" to see some of these changes if your browser is using a cached version of the CSS. (Try clicking Ctrl-F5 if you're on a Windows machine.) Eventually your browser will update this whether or not you manually force a reload.
* The premium membership pages have been updated to work better with smartphones. You shouldn't have to zoom in and out or do any horizontal scrolling to navigate those pages anymore.
* I've added a few feature requests over the last few months. I didn't keep a running list, but if I posted or told you that it'll be in the "Next Big Update"--this is it.

The "massive" part of this update is in the location information stored in the database. I redesigned how locations are stored, processed and updated. If I broke something, there's a good chance you'll find it when running a location-based search (including trip searches, area searches, rectangle searches, etc.)

For most of you, the main thing you might notice is that if you create a custom location, you'll find that the coordinates and radius of your location may not update immediately. This will happen when somebody else is already using that location with different coordinates and/or radius. Basically, AQ recognizes the fact that two different people are trying to use the same location, but that disagree over the location or size of the location. Which is right? AQ doesn't know!

So your new coordinates/size are put into a list that moderators will be notified of and they can look at the information provided by both people and make a determination about which is the correct data to use. Hopefully it won't ever take more than a day at most before one of the moderators can validate the data and approve the change (assuming the information you provided is accurate, of course).

This process only happens with two different people are trying to use the same location but disagree on its coordinates and/or size. If you are the only person using a location, AQ will happily accept whatever you enter regardless how of incorrect it may or not be and the change will happen instantaneously. =)

So that's it in a nutshell.

Unless you're a premium member--in which case there's a new feature/perk you can check out! Under the Toolbox menubar, you'll find a new option labeled Manage Locations. Here, you can check out a list of all of the locations that are currently being used by your account--the locations of all of the boxes you've listed, events you've listed, custom locations added to other people's boxes, etc.

This is actually a page I've used for years as an admin tool to update incorrect locations or check out the details of a specific location to figure out what's going on when people report problems with the search and it's incredibly useful. For non-admins, it's probably not as useful, but it's still interesting to look at and lets you handle locations separately from boxes, event or whatever the case may be.

You can use this to see exactly what AQ has in its database about the location you're using and edit it as needed. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that you're editing the actual location information when you change a location from here. When you "change" a location by editing a box (for instance), what you're really doing is pointing the box to a different location. The actual location doesn't change--just which one you're referring to. Changes with this new tool, however, changes the actual location, so if you have multiple boxes pointing to the same location and edit that location, all boxes using that location will get updated.

So the rule here is to use the Manage Locations page to correct location information (like your box in New York is showing up in Texas searches), and use the old "edit box" (or event, or tracker, or whatever) to change the location of a box/event/whatever (because, for instance, the box used to be located in New York, but it was retired from there and moved to Texas).

Related to this, when you pull up the box/event/tracker details page, you'll find a new link that will take you directly to the page with all of the information AQ has about the location for that page. Just to make it a little easier to find that page without having to go through Manage Locations page. =)

So that's it in a nutshell.

Unless… you're a moderator. =) And I'll post about stuff you folks should know about in the Moderator board.

I've done a heck of a lot of testing for this update, but it's a massive update that affects thousands of lines of code across hundreds of files, so there are almost certainly a few bugs that slipped through my testing. Let me apologize in advance if you run into trouble from any of them, and I'll be monitoring AQ closely for the next couple of days so I can hop on whatever problems might arise. Please be patient, though! I'm optimistic the problems will be minimal, though, and hopefully most of you won't notice any bugs at all! =)