AQ Completes Hostile Takeover of LbNA!

Your AQ-loyalty will be
marked with a crown!

Yes, it's finally true. I've taken over LbNA. Some of you have noticed the subtle changes happening over on that other site. Suspicious icons that looked awfully similar to those used on AQ. Weird bugs suddenly showing up. There are, in any major coup, kinks to be worked out, and that's been keeping me pretty busy.

I've also been making some tweaks to AQ as a result of the takeover, which I've posted about in more detail there. The main changes you'll see are the new crown and dagger icons by member trailnames to mark AQ-loyalists (the crown) and LbNA loyalists (the dagger). More tweaks will be forthcoming, but that's the main one you'll see for now.

Suggestions and comments are welcome! And if you don't like any of my changes, I'd normally tell you to just use LbNA instead, but I guess that won't work anymore. So just start geocaching instead!

Happy trails!

LbNA-loyalists will be marked with a backstabbing knife

 

 

The Next Big Update Has Arrived!

T-Bone and Tic Tac of Happy Hyper Hikers

Nearly a year in the making, it's finally arrived! I'm not going to list every tiny thing that this update includes, but rather just a broad overview.

Before I start, however, just a reminder: If there's a page that looks a bit wonky, try clicking Ctrl-F5 (or equivalent) to refresh the page and see if that fixes it. There are changes to the CSS and if your browser is using a cached page, it might not look quite right.

The biggest part of the update are event listings. I've pretty much completely rewrote the entire event sub-section. I scoured the message boards and my archived mail looking back over a decade's worth of comments and suggestions dealing with event listings and incorporating as many of them into the update as possible.

Some of the most noticeable improvements with regards to events include:

• Attendees can now list multiple items for the potluck--so if you're bringing multiple items, you can list them all in the proper categories.
• Event admins can now request specific potluck items.
• Attendees who live near an event can list if they have space available to host out-of-area attendees, or those who rent a hotel room or campsite can request "roommates" to help split the costs.
• Timezones are better tracked, so virtual events should list the start and end times for your local time zones automatically. *knock on wood*
• Each event can now be posted to, so if you have a question or comment about the event, you can post it directly to the event page.
• Waitlists have been greatly improved. Once an event is full and people start adding themselves to the waitlist, event organizers can manually promote waitlisted members to a signup status (or demote them if necessary). In fact, you can create an event with just yourself as the only signup and a limit of 1, then everyone who signs up is automatically waitlisted. Which can be useful for events that cost a fee. As fees are paid, you can promote the waitlisted member into a signup. So it is possible to have more people signed up for an event than there is "space" for. Also, once a waitlist is created, people won't automatically be moved into the signup position if space becomes available. Event organizers decide who and when people are moved between the signup list and waitlist.
  
• You can signup (or waitlist) sub-accounts at the same time as yourself.
• There are now options to "watch" and "ignore" events.
• All types of boxes can now be listed as "boxes at an event" (not to be confused with "event boxes" which is a specific type of box). So event organizers, for instance, can specifically list each traditional box planted at the park--even those that were never planted specifically for the event. Personal travelers, hitchhikers, etc. Anything you bring to the event can be listed as a "box at the event" to make it easier for people to record the finds later.
• You can add events to your calendars. (Google and Apple calendar types, at least.)
  

I think that covers most of the changes regarding events. There's a lot of stuff that changed there, however, and this is certainly not a completely list. 

There's another feature somewhat related to events which involves the massive number of notifications people receive for large events. A hundred people finding a hundred boxes and leaving a comment on every one of them would generate ten thousand AQ mail messages. So event and box notifications now are collected for a period of time. Notifications of finds and attempts on boxes, for instance, now go into a waiting queue and everybody who found a specific box/series will have their reports merged into a single AQ mail message. So if you have 100 plants at an event and 100 people recording finding each of them, you'll no longer get 10,000 AQ mail messages--you'll only get 100 at most. (The number of boxes planted rather than the number of boxes planted multiplied by the number of finders.)

Similarly, the same thing happens with event notifications. Signups, dropoffs, new posts, potluck item changes, etc.... All of the notifications for a specific event will be merged periodically into a single message instead of dozens (or hundreds) of them.

The primary reason for this change is to make one's AQ mail more manageable, but it also helps ease the database load on AQ as well. The downside, however, is that you will no longer get immediate notifications whenever someone records a find or attempt or there's an update to an event. There's a time delay. The default delay is 12 hours, so if someone records a find on your box at 9:00am, AQ will wait until 9:00pm, check all of the pending notifications to you about that box that have occurred between 9:00am and 9:00pm and send them all as one AQ mail.

Premium members can shorten this frequency to as little as 5 minutes--still not immediate, but relatively close to it. If you have a lot of boxes or have planted for a large event with hundreds of people, you can increase the length to as long as a month, if I remember correctly. For those hosting large events, it might be worth lengthening the time to reduce the number of AQ mail messages you get--at least during the height of the event--then return it to whatever value you prefer a few days after the event has ended and most people have logged their finds.

You can adjust this setting in the Email & Notification Preferences settings, in the "Notification Timings" section. I suspect many of you aren't going to like this change (I figure it'll likely be the most controversial of the changes), but for those who host especially large events, you'll find it very convenient. If you have a question about finding a box and need an immediate answer, it'll be best to contact the owner directly rather than by recording a find/attempt since direct messages won't be delayed.

Now off to a completely different sub-system....

For those who use the weather widget, you'll find it too has been completely rewritten. The only reason for this update was that the API I used was set to expire at the end of this month and it was going to stop working. I thought about retiring it completely, but eventually decided to use the National Weather Service API (which is free and doesn't have ridiculously small quotas). The downside, however, is that it only works for the United States, but since most of those who use it live in the United States, hopefully that's not a problem. =) 

Especially with regards to the event and weather sub-systems, a Ctrl-F5 to refresh the CSS might help. Your browser will eventually pick up the new CSS on its own, but forcing a refresh like that will just speed things up.

All the other changes are relatively minor things. Those are the two sub-systems that I basically rewrote from scratch. Off the top of my head, I don't really remember what else I changed, but you're bound to find some minor tweaks here and there if you look closely.

If I said anything about a tweak or change being in the "Next Big Update", this was it. It's live now.

This is an absolutely massive update, and while I have run thousands of tests, there are still likely to be a few bugs that slipped through the cracks. Please be patient as I fix those.

Thanks again for putting up with me! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you know where to find me. =)

Burning Feet (and Sadie)

Premium membership prices

Just a head's up for any of you who were thinking about buying a premium membership or renewing it soon. It's been over 4 years since I last raised prices and the time has come for me to raise it once again. Inflation is real! And while hardware costs typically fall over time, hosting costs have been rising. (General living expenses have been on the rise as well!) So on June 1st, premium memberships will be $5 higher.

Renewal prices will rise as well, although that's a bit more complicated to explain since I've promised never to raise your rate above what you originally paid for a premium membership as long as you've never allowed your premium membership to expire. So there's a whole range of amounts that people pay for renewals. A lucky few who've been premium members since the very beginning (2004) are still paying just $15/year, and that will continue. If your original purchase price was less than $35/year, your renewal rates won't change. If your original purchase price was at $35/year or higher, the renewal rate will rise to a maximum of $39.95.

Basically, AQ subtracts $5 from the non-renewal price, and if that amounts falls above your original purchase price, then your original rate is your renewal price. Otherwise, you get a $5 from the current non-renewal rate. Clear as mud?

Anyway... like I said, the code for the renewals gets a little messy and it's a bit complicated to explain.

There's another bit of a complication when it comes to renewals.... AQ sends an AQ message a month before your premium membership's expiration date, and AQ will still honor the renewal prices in that message if you received it this month. (At least it should work that way. If you find a bug and it doesn't, do let me know!) So essentially, for of you with expiring premium memberships in June, you won't see the renewal rates increase until July--after your premium membership was scheduled to expire anyhow.

If your premium membership is set to expire after June, you might still benefit by renewing earlier rather than later. Those of you who have started your premium membership in the last four or five years will see renewal rates increase, but you don't have to wait until the expiration date is right around the corner before renewing. You can renew at any time! Some people will even pay for a couple of years of premium membership at a time just so they don't have to deal with it every year and you're more than welcome to take advantage of that if you'd like.

In any case, if you were thinking about signing up for a premium membership or want to renewal before rates go up, get your order in before June 1st!

Actually, technically speaking, AQ is displaying the new prices already--but it's "discounted" to the old prices through June 1st. The "discount" will simply be discontinued on June 1st.

There's also another benefit for new premium members to signup before the end of the month--you'll never have to pay a renewal rate above your original signup price, so by signing up with the lower rate, you'll also get lower renewal rates in the future as well.

Thanks for your support!

Recording finds and attempts, version 2.0!

Well, I finally did it. I updated the sub-system for recording finds and attempts. It's been completely rebuilt from the ground up! 

You'll definitely notice some changes with them, but the two most important changes to note are:

1. You can record multiple finds and attempts on the same box! So if you revisit a box after you've first found it, you can record another find on it without removing your previous one! It doesn't matter how often you record a find on it, however--it still counts as only 1 find on your F-count. So please, if you revisit boxes, record the find! Let everyone know the box is still alive and well on subsequent visits!
   
   Likewise, you can record multiple attempts on the same box as well. Only the last attempt you record on a box is included in the F-summaries and factors into strike counts and findability and such. Earlier attempts are essentially ignored, but they don't hurt anything either.
   
   
2. And the other big change is that you can now specify the confidence level of your attempts. So now there are three levels of attempts: high-confidence, mid-confidence and low-confidence attempts.
   
   I imagine a high-confidence attempt is basically what everyone has more-or-less been recording to this point, but now there are options if you have a lot (or a little) doubt about your attempt. There's also an option for a "zero-confidence" attempt, although I've started calling those "fake attempts" in my code. I imagine those being used for people who have an urge to record attempts but didn't actually look for the box. They looked at a mystery clue but couldn't figure out the starting point so they think they "attempted" the box kind of thing. Or they started hiking down the trail, but it started to rain so they turned around before reaching the end if it. That type of thing where there was never a real search for the physical box. AQ basically just ignores these, but you're welcome to record them as zero-confidence attempts.
   

There are other details that I'm sure some of you want to know all about. For instance, with all these attempt options, how are strikes counted? How does the F-summary work? 

In a nutshell, a high-confidence attempt counts as one strike as usual. A mid-confidence attempt counts as half a strike, and a low-confidence attempt counts as a 1/4 strike. (But after adding everything together, they will be rounded to the nearest whole number.) So if you use the default strikeout settings on AQ, it would take 3 high-confidence strikes before a box is struck out, 5 mid-confidence strikes or 10 low-confidence strikes. (Zero-confidence attempts, as I said before, are ignored by AQ so they basically count as 0 strikes.)

F-summaries still use F's and X's to mark finds and attempts, although now the F and X will be capitalized if the finder/attempter is a planter of the box. Those are basically the maintenance visits by someone who should know what they're talking about. Lowercase letters are finds and attempts by non-planters. As for attempts, the letters are sized based on the confidence levels, so high-confidence attempts will have a much bigger X than a low-confidence attempt. The colors also go from "in your face red" to "subtle, low-confidence blue." =)

There are also minor notes practically not even worth mentioning. For instance, although you can now record multiple finds and attempts on the same box, they can't be on the same day. If you record a find or attempt on a specific box on a specific date, it will overwrite anything else you had previously recorded for that same box on the same date. But really, why would you be recording it more than once for the same day anyhow?! Most likely, something had been entered incorrectly the first time so you're probably just trying to fix the information.

There are some other relatively minor, cosmetic changes you might see around finds and attempts as well.  Mostly to make sure there was space to display multiple finds and attempts (if needed) and mark the type of attempt that was being recorded, but since nobody has had a chance to record multiple finds/attempts on the same box or record different types of attempts, it generally looks the same as before. For now. You'll notice the changes more as y'all  start using the new features.

There are almost certainly going to be bugs that slipped through the cracks and need to be worked out. Please be patient. This was a huge undertaking that required a lot of changes to the code and database, but I'll fix the bugs as quickly as they're found and reported.

Hope you enjoy the update! If you have any questions or comments, send them along.

Lead contamination in the rubber stamp carving kit!

I have some bad news to report! Some tests came back and I just found out that my new carving block kit suffers from lead contamination and was denied a license for sale by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. I'll have to find a new manufacturer and see how things go from there.

Okay, just kidding.... there was never any carving block kit, but I suspect most of you already figured that out almost immediately. It's your annual April Fools joke! I hope you y'all got a good laugh out of it!

Most of what you saw came from the Soap Making 101 Kit. Throw in a few things from a visit to the Dollar Tree, a little Photoshopping and presto! Instant carving block kit that does an excellent job of cleaning your hands. I don't think my hands have ever been so clean! =)

A bit of my soap carving mess while creating the April Fools joke. I tried playing around with some multi-colored blocks of soap, but I wound up not using any of them for the April Fools Day prank. One of them currently now sits in the shower, however, ready to be used!

But! Technically speaking.... you can carve soap. I've done it. Just ask anyone from the Monday carving meetups. So... joke's on you! You really can carve these soap blocks! =P

But they aren't very good for stamping... If you'd like to carve soap blocks, however, I will recommend The Complete Guide to Soap Carving and Ultimate Soap Carving. I have both books and both explain how to carve soap, which soaps work best, and all the other nitty-gritty details. If I had to pick one as my favorite, I'd go with the first one. 

Carving soap has a lot in common with carving stamps, except it's more of a 3D object you're creating and you don't have to worry so much about text showing up backwards! (Actually, trying to carve text on soap sounds pretty crazy to begin with, but more power to you if you give it a try!)

To answer a few additional questions some of you might have had.... the colors falu, australien and zaffre are real color names. I wanted to use names more interesting than red, yellow and blue so did a search for weird and funny color names which landed me on 13 Funny, Silly and Weird Color Names You May Never Have Heard Of. You'll find all three of them there. *nodding* I was majorly disappointed that I didn't have a green color when I saw the color named "goose turd green" and, given the scents available, really wanted to work that into the text which I did in a clumsy manner. =) I also particularly liked the "lusty gallant" color name, but couldn't think of a good way to work that into the post. Oh, well. The color "puke" certainly fit the theme as well, but that color name didn't seem "exotic" enough to be fun.

The soap kit included only one scent: cucumber melon. It's a pleasant scent, but definitely not suitable for a "letterboxer stamp carving block kit." All scents described in the announcement are totally made up, but y'all probably knew that already!

The so-called "stiffener" was just vinegar in a spray bottle that I bought at the Dollar Tree. (That is, I bought the spray bottle at the Dollar Tree. The vinegar was already here!)

The image of the stamps are, in fact, real stamps. They are not, however, hand-carved. I bought them at the Dollar Tree for $1.25. They were thin and clear, and even without any adhesives, stuck surprisingly well to the soaps I made! So I stuck them on the soaps and chopped out the soap to the shape of the stamp. So, yeah. Store-bought stamps, but they looked simple enough that I figured I could pass them off as really good hand-carved stamps! =) And heck! One of them was even a blue diamond! Kind of made it look a bit more legit, I thought.

Anyhow, hope you all enjoyed yourselves and if you feel like expanding your carving horizons.... consider giving soap carving a try! It really is fun. Although, admittedly, I carve far more rubber stamps than soap creations! But I think muggle-leaning friends and family probably enjoy the soap carvings more than the rubber stamp carvings. =)

I'll also point out, if you do give soap-carving a try, you could also try carving wood. Carving soap and carving wood is exactly the same process except the wood is a lot harder to carve and requires sharper knives and takes longer. But, just like with stiffer rubber carving blocks, you can get a lot more detail in a block of wood than a block of soap!

Oh! Almost forgot.... All those "pre-orders" you entered into the website.... I don't think most of you read the small print: I reserved the right to resell your addresses for fun and profit! Who knows what might show up in your mailboxes now? *diabolical laughter*

A few of the actual soap carvings that I made: a train, starfish, pirate, seashell, boat and owl! I'm still a beginner soap carver, though. I hope to improve with more practice!

New! DIY Carving Block Kits!

So some of you know I've been working on a "secret project" for the last few months, and I'm now ready to share it with the world! I've been developing a DIY carving block kit! You choose the color! You choose the scent! You choose how stiff you want the carving block to be! It's a fun little project for those who like to get crafty and... well, come on! We're letterboxers! Who of us doesn't like to get crafty?!

Read all about it and pre-order now! =)

Challenge icons, publishing boxes, and more....

If you have at least 500 finds
and attempts on challenging
boxes, you'll get this icon by
your name. (But smaller!)

So I just did a major update of Atlas Quest this evening. Quite literally, I've updated hundreds and hundreds of files and thousands and thousands of lines of code. It's a massive, massive update. I'm not sure there's even a file with source code on AQ that wasn't affected in at least some minor way.

But... you probably won't notice many changes. The vast majority of them are the "under the hood" variety. The last big update I did a month or two ago included an upgrade of PHP from 7.4 to 8.1. Now that AQ is running with the latest version of PHP, I added stricter type-checking all over the place and created a bunch of enumerated data types to represent the enumerated data types that the database uses. It's still an ongoing process--but basically, I updated tons of source code to be easier to update, easier to maintain and easier for other people to read and tweak. That's where the bulk of this update lies, and there's absolutely nothing to see.

However, allegedly, according to the PHP documentation, this version of PHP runs about 10% faster than the previous version so perhaps you'll see a slight improvement in speed?  I don't really notice any difference, but the vast majority of the time, the Internet is the bottleneck, not the speed of the server. So I consider it a "theoretical" improvement. =)

But there are a couple of minor changes you can see... including "challenge coin" icons by some people's name. It starts as a relatively boring silver coin when you find (or attempt to find) a box listed as "challenging" on AQ. With enough finds and attempts, it'll be upgraded into a gold coin. Then a stack of coins. Then a giant pile of coins. And finally, when you find (or attempt to find) your 100th challenging box, you start getting bills in the mix as well. =)

AQ has been recording when y'all have been finding or attempting to find challenging boxes for a number of months now, so some people already have such icons. 

If you don't like the icons... well, you can suck it. =) 

Just kidding... You're more than welcome to complain and provide better suggestions. If I like the idea and it's practical, maybe I'll run with it. If I don't think it's an improvement or it's not something that's practical for me to implement, I won't.

I also completely changed the way unpublished boxes are stored in the database, which led to a few minor changes in the interface. The biggest difference is in your logbook. Now you'll find unpublished boxes as a new "action" rather than a "box type." If you have saved links to that particular page, you'll want to update those.

The one perk of how this information is stored in the database, however, is that you can now run searches for your unpublished boxes. You'll find the option on the Advanced Search page as an "other option". A normal search won't include unpublished boxes, but if you check that box, you'll see search results that only include your unpublished boxes (assuming all other search parameters are also met).

Special perk for admins: You can actually search everyone's unpublished boxes. ;o) This is helpful for us when someone reports a problem with listing a box that hasn't been published yet. We can search for it and take a look at the problem. But that's an admin perk--most of you can only see your own unpublished boxes.

Those are the two main things I can think of which you'll see have changed. There are probably some other minor modifications that I've long since forgotten about. And given the huge number of lines of code that have been modified, there are almost certainly some bugs that slipped through the cracks. Please be patient as I try to fix them!

Happy trails! Now get outside and try finding some challenging boxes. =)

This more modest financial fortune
goes to those with between 5 and 19 find/attempts
on challenging boxes.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust....

I've got some bad news for everyone: Y'all are going to die. I hope this doesn't come as a huge shock, and I apologize if it is, but it's true. It'll likely even happen to me someday. Happy Halloween! I'm such a ghoul....

But in all seriousness... With that thought in mind, you can now write a letterboxing last will and testament to include with your account information. I figure it'll mostly be used for whoever you want to adopt your boxes after the grim reaper visits, but I left the field open-ended so you can write about pretty much anything. You could say that you want certain boxes go to certain people, you could write your own obituary that should be included in your tributes page, or anything else that might be relevant to the letterboxing portion of your life.

Whatever you write here can only been seen by admins, and when the time comes, we'll check it out and do our best to honor your wishes.

But I hope you all live long and happy lives and the information in it won't be needed for many, many years to come!

The Easiest Boxes Prank....

I had an idea early in AQ's history. I no longer remember precisely when the idea first occurred to me, but it was probably within a few years of starting Atlas Quest: A way that AQ could measure your chance of finding a specific letterbox.

It was a real idea, but I never ran with it. I mentioned it to a few close friends over the years more as a curiosity--the ideas that never happened--but I deliberately never posted about the idea publicly since I was sure it would be controversial and why start a controversy if I had no intention of implementing it?

Rozebud and geckospot, shocked by the April Fools prank!

The idea appealed to me greatly on an intellectual level. I was curious how accurate I could make such a feature. Theoretically, it wouldn't be hard to run a statistical analysis on a box and determine how likely a specific person would be to find a given box. Depending on how many variables are checked for, the math can get a little ugly. From an intellectual standpoint, the problem ranked up there with the traveling salesman program. I wanted to do it for fun! =)

But I didn't. And not just because I thought it would be controversial. Anyone who's been on AQ for a bit knows I've pushed on with controversial features if I thought the benefits would outweigh the negatives. (Or, more likely, I didn't think the supposed negatives weren't as bad as people imagined they would be--and always knew I could undo a feature if I turned out to be gloriously wrong.)

Nope, the reason I never implemented it was that I never thought it would work. Atlas Quest is a small little website, a micro-site in the vastness of the Internet, and it doesn't have a lot of data about boxes. The average box only has a handful of finds, and is lucky to have more than a couple of attempts recorded. How could I accurately determine the "findability" of a box with such a small sample set? Unless hundreds of thousands of people started using AQ on a daily basis, there would probably never be enough data to make the necessary calculations that could be both accurate and reasonably precise.

So I never implemented it. It was a dead end not even worth trying.

Photo by thunderbird.

 Fast forward to earlier this week, and I needed an April Fools Day joke. I always have a few ideas in mind, and often times, I wind up choosing one based on how much time I have available to implement it. In this case, I had less than a week to throw something together.

And this old idea I had for a real feature, I felt, had some potential. I could finally implement my idea! Of course, it would never work, but that was okay--it was an April Fools joke, after all. It didn't have to work!

And a few days ago, I sat down and spent a couple of hours hacking out an algorithm for classifying boxes by "findability." It wasn't a complex algorithm. I just wanted something that, with a passing glace, appeared to be legit. So I used things like the status of the box, how many strikes it had, how long it had been since it was found, etc., to group boxes into easy, average, hard and impossible groups. Box is unavailable or retired? Impossible group! Box was active, planted yesterday and had no strikes? Easy!

Then I pulled up about a hundred listings to see how well the results turned out. It didn't have to be perfect--just something that didn't look totally random. 

But it turned out perfect. I was absolutely stunned looking through the boxes. Box after box, I mentally calculated where I would have classified it with the information available on AQ database, and my algorithm--box after box--put it in the exact same category. It was a little spooky.

And not funny. Not funny at all.... This wasn't an April Fool prank anymore. It was a real feature! Crap. The joke was on me!

The joke was also on Angel Winks
when she woke up in the morning, but I'll talk
about that later....

What to do? What to do?

Wassa--my right hand advisor for all things April Fools--suggested that I just sabotage the results and randomly throw boxes in various groups.

But I thought of another way to sabotage the results--make the different groups look and sound more-or-less the same. All of the categories would be some degree of "easy". And that's the road I started heading down.

There were several layers for this prank I had had in mind, and I wasn't sure I would have them all ready before April Fools, but that was okay. I'd just launch the joke with whatever I had completed. So the first step I did was just list results--calculated on the fly--on the box details page. That had been my proof of concept that went so terribly, terribly wrong.

The second layer was to show the results on a page of search results--so one could glance through a lot of boxes to identify the easiest finds. This took a lot more work on my part. I needed to calculate the groupings ahead of time and store them in the database to be looked up when needed. It could calculate the groupings for boxes one at a time fast enough, but a search results with hundreds of results... no, that would be too slow. They needed to be calculated ahead of time and stored in the database.

So I did that, got it all working.

I just love it when things just "work." =)
Photo by Travel'n Turtle

Powered by the database now, I could add additional layers of "functionality". I could let people run searches based on the box's findability. I could add a widget to calculate the "easiest" box to find within a certain area. 

The data in the database was actually very real, but the results AQ displayed were sometimes a little.... fake? Is that the right word? Yes, I think that's a good description of the situation.

For instance, the high degree of precision on the box details page (e.g. 99.8352% ±89.84%) were totally made up. I gave a ridiculous number of decimal points with a range so wide that it would be completely worthless. Although I needed to make sure the numbers for "incredibly easy" boxes would be higher than "super easy" boxes, and those would be higher than "very easy" boxes, which would be higher than the mere "easy" boxes. So I subtracted 10% of easiness every time the group went down a level. But the decimal points were pure random.

The widget to show the easiest box on AQ as well as one's home area was, perhaps, a bit misleading. AQ did divide boxes into 4 categories, but within a category, there was no ranking--so there was no "easiest" box to identify. Instead, I had it pick a box at random from the "incredibly easy" category. Wassa suggested that I modify it a bit and have it pick a box that people have attempted but never found just to mess with them. Excellent idea! Although I added an additional requirement that the box still needed to be active. So I tweaked the "home area" results to do that, which pleased me to no end when people pointed out on the message boards that it was sending them to boxes that they had already tried to find but that they "knew" they were missing. =)

Memere titled this photo "Late night antics."
Late night antics indeed.... =)

As far as jokes go, though, it was one of the dumber ones I've created. I really needed to "sell" the joke well, and that's what I spent all evening on March 31st working on: the Easiest Boxes on Atlas Quest post. I mixed a lot of fiction in with few actual facts, and tried to think of anything funny that I could add.

That list of factors used in the "complex calculations"... the first three entries in that list were actually real. The rest of them I spent the better part of an hour making up. It didn't matter if the idea was preposterous and impractical to implement even if I wanted to--if it sounded like it could have any effect at all on the chances of someone finding a box, I included it.

After finishing the text of the post--and there was a lot of text--I wanted some pictures to break it up and make it look pretty. What kind of photos did I have? Screenshots of the feature didn't seem like the right way to go with it. Ah ha! I know! A few months ago, I created a special photo album asking for photos that I could use on AQ. I should take a gander at those. That's what I created the album for, after all!

The gag, of course, was basically promising that every box you looked for would be "easy," so I focused on the images of people showing successful finds. There were a lot of good candidates, but I ended up choosing two photos from Angel Winks (here and here). And although I wasn't looking for it, I saw the inky fingers photo by Wise Wanderer and thought that would be a nice change from just people finding boxes.

And while adding that photo to the post, I got the idea to add a fake testimonial, which tied in nicely with the photo. Perfect! It looked awesome! =)

For those of you who missed Mosaic Butterfly's fake
endorsement on AQ's home page, this was the photo I used.
I think it said something like "I can't believe it really works!"

I was a little concerned that--although they submitted the photos to the photo gallery for use on AQ--perhaps they might not like the idea of it being used with fake testimonials or implying an actual endorsement of the new feature on AQ, so I quickly wrote them AQ mail pulling them in on the joke. By this point, there were only a couple of hours until midnight when the prank would go live. Angel Winks lives a couple of timezones ahead of me--she could already be asleep and not even know I've used her photos until she wakes up in the morning! I crossed my fingers and hoped she'd be okay with it. It wasn't as late for Wise Wanderer, but it was still late. I felt pretty sure that they wouldn't mind my using the photos, but I was ready to remove them if they sent me irate messages in the morning telling them they did not approve of how I used them

After that was done, I realized that there was no announcement for anyone coming into AQ through the home page. I figured I should add a new section to announce the new feature, then headed back to the photo gallery to look for a photo that would fit well, and this photo hit the jackpot. =) Perfect! It needed another fake testimonial too. After getting that added, I hurriedly send Mosaic Butterfly a message to formally welcome her into the conspiracy as well. =)

And then.... By the time I was ready to say everything was done, I had about an hour to wait until midnight. So I killed some time watching YouTube videos and counting down the minutes.

Most of the features were set to automatically start working the second midnight struck, but a few items I had to manually set up. The new widget, for instance, I needed to run a line in the database to make sure it got added to everyone's My Page setup. But I also discovered that the theme was changing randomly! I had put that in to run on April 1st as a placeholder last December thinking I'd create some sort of theme for April Fools, but then I had forgotten to take it out when I ended up not creating a special theme for the day. Drats! So if any of you had been on AQ within a few minutes after midnight, you would have seen the theme change with every page load. If anyone noticed, they didn't post about it--for which I was thankful. =) 

On a related note, that random-theme them was the first April Fools joke I ever played on AQ, and I've used it a few other years the day after April Fools to mark the end of a joke. It wasn't supposed to run at all this year, though.

I had to check for gremlins in the night....
Photo by Super Hedge Hoggie

I poked around the website, trying all the features making sure they were all working correctly. I found a couple of issues if someone tried to access the new features but weren't logged into an account. Minor bugs in the code that were never found since I didn't create unit tests to check these changes. (I tend not to make unit tests for code that I know will only run for a single day and isn't particularly complicated.) So I spent several more minutes fixing bugs--but so far as I can tell, nobody found them before I was able to fix them.

After everything was all set and done, I watched a couple of more YouTube videos to kill some more time. I was dead tired but didn't dare to go sleep yet for a couple of reasons: (1) in case somebody discovered a bug, I wanted to fix it and (2) I wanted to see who would comment on the joke first and what they had to say. Lame? Great? Hilarious? Stupid?

But by 1:30am, I couldn't keep my eyelids open anymore and finally called it a night.

I slept in particularly late. After being up so late at night, I slept in late too. Time to check up on how the April Fools joke was going over....

And... it was okay. =) Not great, not bad, but okay.... More or less what I expected out of it.

What would everyone be doing while
I got some much needed rest? DrCAWatson
appeared to keep on boxing....

But there was still one last joke to play.... to announce that this feature is actually real! Not the version that ran on April Fools Day, of course. I deliberately sabotaged those results for that day. But the data in the database was actually pretty good data and I wanted to give it life. Seems like a waste just to throw it away. That hadn't been my intention when I first ran with this joke, but that's what it turned into!

So I've dismantled the fake widget and fake results. I've rename the categories into their proper descriptions of easy, average, hard and impossible. (To be fair, it's not so much a measure of how difficult the boxes are to find, but more about the likelihood about the chances of finding it. But "findability" seemed like a weird word to describe the feature, but maybe it's a better name for it?) 

And I know there are some people who would prefer not to see this information, so you really can remove the "difficulty" of a box from search results and box listings in your letterbox & search preferences. When I announced that on the message boards, it because that was real.

But I like the feature. Not so much for trying to decide whether I should look for a box or not, but it just gives me a sense of the likelihood of whether the box is there or not which I tend to do anyhow. The status isn't always accurate since listings are often abandoned, attempts aren't always accurate since they can be recorded on boxes that are still in place, and the length of time since the box has last been visited doesn't tell you anything about whether the box is still there or not. There's not really a perfect way to determine the viability of a box--but combining all those discrete pieces of data gives me a ballpark idea of what to expect without having to individually check all the discrete pieces of data manually. I like it. =)

It's the April Fool's Day prank that lived!

I'm pretty sure that even Essex Explorers's kids like
April Fools more than Christmas. (Right?)

And I'm going to explain exactly the algorithm AQ uses to determine which difficulty level to assign to a box. By knowing exactly how the algorithm works, you can decide for yourself if the results are something you might find useful. If they aren't, you can ignore the option in your preferences.

But I can imagine that some people might be upset if their box ends up being categorized as "hard" or "impossible" even though they checked up on the box just yesterday and it's perfectly fine. So knowing how the algorithm works also allows you to better manipulate how your own boxes show up.

So, here's how the calculations are made. Internally, the categories are stored as easy, average, hard or impossible, so four possible categories.

1. All boxes start as easy.
   
2. If the box has an unknown status, it'll be moved to average. 
3. If the box has an unavailable or retired status, it'll be moved to impossible.
4. If the box has one strike, it'll be downgraded to average. (If it's already at average or below, it will not be downgraded further.)
   
5. If the box has two or three strikes, it'll be downgraded to hard. (If it's already at hard or impossible, it will not be downgraded further.)
6. If the box has not been found for at least one year, it will be downgraded one level--but not down to impossible.
7. If the box has not been found for at least five years, it will be downgraded an additional level--but not down to impossible.

And that's it. You'll find that a box can never be classified as "impossible" unless it has a status of unavailable or retired. That's the only thing that will move the box to the "impossible" category.

If I had to guess, the most controversial part of the algorithm is that I use the last found date at all to determine if a box is viable, but I figure even if a box IS still there after 5 years, it's okay to mark it as "hard" because after that much time, there's a good chance that significant landmarks could have changed if it's a long hike, and a significant chance it really did go missing if it were in an urban environment. So boxes without a find for at least 5 years will always be labeled as hard.

But... you also have indirect control over which category your boxes fall into. A maintenance visit, for instance, counts as a "find" as far as AQ is concerned, so you could just record a maintenance visit to remove the "old last found" penalty. Ideally, you'd go out in person to check the box and make sure the clues are up-to-date and fresh, but that's not a requirement. Recording a maintenance visit can also reset the strike count back to 0, which removes the strike penalty as well.

After that, the only thing left affecting the difficulty of the box is its status--which you, again, have full control over.

Anyhow, I hope some of you find the feature helpful. Not simply to decide which boxes to look for or giving you a ballpark idea of the likelihood that the box is findable, but even for which boxes of your own that, perhaps, you should check up on.

And hey! Have you enjoyed the photos on this blog post? Want to, perhaps, see your own photos used someday? Then be sure to submit them to the Letterboxing Photos for AQ gallery! That's where I grabbed all these photos from. (That photo album, I think, is the best idea I had all year!)

Happy trails!

You might think this is part of an April Fools Day joke, but you'd be wrong.
It's just another letterbox adventure for AdventurousAcorn. =)

April Fools: A short history

Yes, it is that time of year again, as most of you quickly figured out, and once again, AQ could not go a year without some sort of shenanigans to celebrate the day. It's a yearly tradition that has been happening every year since 2006. That year, it was a small event, where random themes would be used every time you loaded a page. 

In 2007, it was another small prank--this time, introducing a slew of new icons. At the time, AQ still felt very new and people were constantly suggesting new icons. I included some of the real suggestions among the fake icons, but some of them were clearly ridiculous. It was meant more as a joke. I didn't think anyone would really believe that I would entertain the idea of adding such a massive number of icons. It would have been so unwieldy! People wouldn't even be able to remember what all of them meant! And a number of the icons were just so absurd. (Dinosaur crossing? Really?) Nobody would really think it was a real feature.

But many people did.... much to my surprise!

So the next year, in 2008, I came up with a ridiculous idea... but could sound somewhat plausible. I figured if the previous year's implausible idea fooled people, a plausible idea could fool a lot of people!

So I pondered the most horrible thing that could happen to letterboxing--the stuff that would give people nightmares if it were true. What if... AQ joined forces with McDonald's to promote letterboxing as a fun and healthy activity for children?

I'd create a McDonald's-based theme and make a grand announcement. That was it. Relatively simple and easy. I swung the idea by Wassa for his thoughts. Even then, I knew he was a gold mine of ideas when it came to pranks. And he did not approve of the idea at all! "No," he told me, "this is definitely not acceptable. It must be bigger! Much bigger!"

Then he followed up with: "We can do much better."

We...? Somehow, I lost control of my own April Fools joke. I didn't have time to work on anything more extensive, but Wassa said not to worry about it--he'd take care of everything. As if that was going to put my unease at rest.... *shaking head*

I knew a little about what was he was up to. He needed my help to create a system that would automatically create hundreds or even thousands of new McAccounts to sell the illusion that McDonalds was promoting letterboxing and thousands of new members were joining. 

He created the McBoxer alias--supposedly a marketing director at McDonald's headquarters months ahead of time to seed the story, built up McBoxer's bona-fides on the message boards and found willing helpers to record real plants in boxes near McDonald's headquarters.

The only known photo of McBoxer.
He does look a little shady....
I'm not sure why anyone would have trusted him.

He found help to create an entirely new McLetterboxing website, which I knew about because I bought the domain name and added space on the server for the site--and the site even included an actual letterboxing-themed happy meal. He found I don't know how many people before the Big Day to post to the message boards, saying that they went into McDonald's to see for themselves if the story was true and posting about their (positive) results.

The amount of hours and preparation that went into this joke was vast. I knew Wassa was a wonderful source of ideas, but I was truly scared at the size of his ideas.

And then the Big Day arrived. April Fools. I had automated the announcement to post automatically on the home page because I was on a thru-hike and far from civilization. Eventually, I saw some of the posts when another hiker lent me his smart phone to read some of the message boards, but I wouldn't read the entire day's posts until I made it to the next trail town a couple of days later. (To this date, April 1, 2008 still ranks as the busiest day of posting ever on AQ.) But for the most part, I was basically MIA for the Biggest and Most Awesome April Fools prank ever played on AQ.

I didn't realize it at the time, but Wassa was also missing the fruits of his creation. It was on this date when he picked up his new dog, Lucy, and he spend a good portion of the day just driving to Livermore and back. He was a little disappointed miss the unfolding of his epic creation. But it's a little ironic: I, who initially conceived of the idea and certainly played an important role as well as Wassa that super-charged the idea into letterboxing history, were both missing the actual fireworks.

Wassa largely missed the unfolding of his greatest
AQ prank to pick up this cute little dog, Lucy.

 

There have been many more gags and pranks over the years, some better than others, but none of them really matched the epic heights that McBoxer pulled off--and likely never will again. We've batted around ideas for such epic pranks, but now everyone expects there to be shenanigans, and immediately post reminders of the fact. Sometime people even post a day or two early pondering what might be in store for April Fools. We can't really pull anything big off anymore because y'all are watching too closely and too suspicious of us. So the gags now tend to be more amusing in nature. Inside jokes, ridiculous features, or whatever. If some people fall for it--awesome! If absolutely nobody does.... well, I hope they got a laugh out of it anyhow. =)

Anyhow, Wassa emailed me that Lucy--the dog that entered his life during the Great McLetterboxing prank, had been suffering from health problems and had to be put down yesterday. So Wassa spent part of the afternoon yesterday scrolling through the old McLetterboxing posts, reliving the day he picked up Lucy. And marveled that not only did that joke work so well, but that is was probably improved by not having him around to respond or react as much. So in her own special way, Lucy contributed to the Great McLetterboxing April Fools Day prank. Thanks, Lucy! Rest in peace!

This post is long enough as it is, so I'll post tomorrow about the details of this year's April Fools prank which has its own interesting and unusual plot twists.... 

Thanks for the assist, Lucy! =)