Posted by John Patrick on May 6, 2012 in
Geocaching,
Hiking,
Travels 
Twelve years ago geocaching suddenly became useful to citizens. Prior to May 2, 2000, the GPS satellite network had a “feature” called Selective Availability that provided an intentional degradation of the GPS signal so that only the military could use it with accuracy. When President Clinton signed an order to permanently turn off the feature, civilian GPS devices instantly became 10 times more accurate. The first geocache was placed in the state of Oregon the next day. It was hidden in the U.S. state of Oregon on May 3, 2000. As of today, there are more than 1.7 million active geocaches and more than 5 million geocachers worldwide. There are quite a few postings here in patrickWeb about geocaching, and the homepage for geocaching is here. It is a great sport for young and old.
Tags: geocache, geocaching, gps, hiking, selective availability
Posted by John Patrick on Sep 1, 2009 in
Healthcare,
Hiking,
Internet Technology 
The motorcycle ride to the Town of Saugerties was very nice. The four of us met downtown and went to The Dutch Ale House for lunch. Saugerties has a lot of history going back to 1677. The town is a quaint community located between the majestic Catskill Mountains and the scenic 315 mile long Hudson River. We strolled through the 19th century Village and picked off a geocache on the way down to the fully operational lighthouse. I checked the Tide Chart to make sure we could make it along the trail which is only about 4′ above sea level. The first part of the multi-cache was at the lighthouse — placed in a very clever way. The micro film canister contained a piece of paper with the latitude and longitude of the actual cache which was a quarter of a mile away. It too was cleverly placed. This cache find was #99 since we started geocaching in 2003.
Speaking of "clever", the World Community Grid just announced the completion of the first phase of the “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together” project. It took only two years to complete because the members provided nearly 12,000 years of computer processing time to the project. Anyone can participate in the World Community Grid by installing a small piece of software similar to a screen saver. When your PC is idle the excess computing capability that it has gets pulled into a pool to help out on various projects of global importance. One of my PC’s contributed a modest 94 days of processing time to the “Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together” project.
Completing this phase of the project is a significant contribution to the research of not only Dengue Fever but also Hepatitis C, West Nile, Yellow Fever and other diseases caused by the Flaviviridea family of viruses. Get the latest details about the project here and if you want to add your idle computing capacity to important projects just visit the World Community Grid.
Posted by John Patrick on Apr 15, 2009 in
Geocaching,
Healthcare,
Hiking The weather for a hike in the Delaware State Forest near Promised Land, Pennsylvania was perfect — not too hot and not too cold. Promised Land State Park is in the Pocono Plateau, 1,800 feet above sea level and is about is 3,000 acres in size, surrounded by more than 12,000 acres of state forests. The forests are mostly beech, oak, maple and hemlock trees and include two lakes and several small streams. Our trail map was eight years old but thanks to the Garmin Colorado 400t GPS and well market trails, my wife and I were able to have a successful hike of about five miles. We found Promised Land Cache II exactly as described at geocaching.com. A few pictures form the hike are here.
I am so thankful to have the new oxinium knee and that it allows for hiking after less than six months. Last summer it was hobbling around and a half-mile hike resulted in a lot of pain. It seems like everyone knows someone who has had a total knee replacement or is considering one. Much praise and credit is due to Dr. Sanjay Gupta and the teams at Danbury Hospital and Bethel Health Care Rehabilitation Center but I also believe the preparation and approach to rehabilitation make a huge difference as well. The factors that made the biggest difference for me are here.
Tags: geocaching, Healthcare, hiking
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 31, 2008 in
Geocaching,
Hiking,
iPhone,
Mobile,
People I was sitting on the Sporster in the middle of a parking lot about ten miles from the lake when a man approached me with a troubled look on his face. He was late for an appointment and wanted to know if I knew where the Northeast Eye Institute was. Unfortunately, I had never hear of it but told him I would be glad to look it up in Google Maps for him. He said, "the Internet on a call phone?". In a few seconds I had the location and a phone number which I clicked on asked them where exactly their office was and I relayed to him how to get there. He shook my hand with a big thank you and a grin on his face. As he walked away, I grinned too. The iPhone is a very high utility device. The other lesson for me was confirmation that the mobile Internet is huge and has now grown to it’s infancy.
The reason I was sitting in the parking lot was to look for a nearby geocache. Geopher Lite is a GPS based iPhone application which allows you to find geocaches "quickly and easily" on the go. It actually wasn’t that quick and easy but when I got back to the lake a few hours later I checked for iPhone updates. Sure enough there was an update for Geopher Lite which incorporated some of the obvious deficiencies. This is the great thing — apps are always brought up to date with a touch of the phonetop and developers are constantly going to be making improvements. I can see that tight integration with geocaching.com is just a, probably short, matter of time. If I was in the handheld GPS business I would be concerned. The iPhone is going to disintermediate a lot of businesses.
Epilogue: Speaking of gouaches, I found a very interesting one yesterday titled "William Howard Taft’s Forefathers and Family". Finding it was not much of a challenge but seeing the small cemetery across the road from the Lake Wallenpaupack Observation Dike was quite a surprise. I have driven by it hundreds of times and did not even know it was there. The cemetery was built by the Taft family more than 150 years ago and holds the remains of the great, great, great, great grandfather of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, along with about ten other family members.
Other patrickWeb stories about the iPhone
Posted by John Patrick on Apr 4, 2008 in
Gadgets,
Hiking As of this week there are 57,370 people who have accounts at geocaching.com. They have placed 550,474 caches around the world for others to enjoy finding.
In the last 7 days, there have been 440,577 new log entries written by account holders describing their experiences at finding (or not finding) the caches. For me, there are a lot more to find — since January 2003 I have found 81 caches (plus 90 benchmarks) in eight states and seven countries. I really enjoy the sport and hope to find quite a few more caches this summer. Geocaching is the tip of the iceberg of "location based" applications.
There are many GPS receivers on the market now with some breaking below the $100 mark. The hot area is GPS for cars. Many new cars offer built-in units as an option but the "after" market is much larger. One of the newest entries is Dash. The new Dash Express claims to be the first two-way, Internet-connected GPS navigation system. The device delivers traffic and destination information in a new way. You can look up somewhere that you want to go using the Internet and then have that "waypoint" delivered via cellular or WiFi signal directly to your Dash. You then select the new waypoint and the GPS will guide you to your destination. The Dash can also show you the location of all other cars nearby that have a Dash. That makes it a good proxy for traffic but what would be much better would be if all the GPS manufacturers got to together and agreed on a standard for information sharing so that each GPS could actually show the "total" traffic in the area, not just traffic of those cars that have a Dash.
I have been using GPS devices for quite a few years and have or have had most of the manufacturers. On the trike, I have the TomTom Rider. On other bikes I have Garmins. For the last few years I have been using a Magellan for geocaching. They make a really nice device but I don’t like their software. GPS is becoming ubiquitous but the formats for the data storage and data interchange with PCs is a Tower of Babel. Magellan is not alone — the entire GPS industry thrives on proprietary formats that they think help them maintain market share but actually constrict the market and confuse customers. Thankfully, there is a great piece of software called GSAK (geocaching Swiss Army Knife) that is indispensable for anyone who wants to exchange GPS data with their PC. I highly recommend it. GSAK allows you to download thousands of caches from geocaching.com to an easy to use desktop application. You can then sort them, search them, organize them in various ways, see all the logs of those of have found (or not) the caches, and a Google Map to show exactly where the caches are. Once you are ready to pack up and head for the trails, GSAK allows you to easily transfer the selected cache information to your GPS.
As soon as the backorder gets filled I will be ready to go geocaching with the new Garmin Colorado 400t. Looks like the Colorado will be a rugged and advanced handheld and it will be pre-loaded with detailed topographic maps with a 3-D map view, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, an SD card slot, picture viewer and a bright color display. I will be reporting on whether it is as good as it sounds or not. Meanwhile two of my Magellans went on eBay this week and hopefully they will make a new geocacher somewhere happy.
Other patrickWeb stories about hiking, geocaching, and benchmarking
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 26, 2007 in
Hiking The first attempt at geocaching for me was on August 31, 2003. I still enjoy the sport and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in hiking and the outdoors. The basic idea is that individuals or organizations set up "hidden treasures" (caches) in various places around the world and record the locations (latitude and longitude) of the caches on a web site like geocaching.com. An interested adventurer or hiker can then visit the web site, read some hints about the cache, download the latitude and longitude into their handheld GPS receiver, and head out on their search for the cache. The cache may be contained in a tupperware container or ammo can with some gifts and a logbook.The visitor makes an entry in the logbook and if they take something from the cache, they should replace it with something new. The visitor can also go back to geocaching.com and record their success and upload some pictures.
The weather on Sunday could not have been more perfect for an afternoon of hiking. The sky was blue and there were no clouds. Ballard Park is in historic Ridgefield, Connecticut.The temperature was 45 degrees but the kids on skateboards were in tee shirts. The cache was not hidden really well but it made for a nice walk in the park. The second hike — in the woods — would be more ambitious.
Florida Refuge sounds like an escape to the state of Florida but it is actually also in Ridgefield. The trail head is not easy to find and there is extremely limited parking — room for one car to pull off to the side of the road. The yellow trail got us to the top where wooden steps and a bridge signaled that others had been there before. The abundant trees caused the GPS signal to be a bit erratic but after it quieted down we were able to find the cache. The ammo can was a bit battered but the contents were dry. By this time we were sweating in the cold air. There was not enough daylight left to go after the "Good Things Come in Small Parcels" multi-cache. Next time — hopefully before the snow comes. Todays finds made it Geocaches found: 79 and Benchmarks found: 90.
Other patrickWeb stories about hiking
Posted by John Patrick on Oct 26, 2007 in
Conferences,
Healthcare,
Hiking,
Travels 
It was an educational week at the Leadership Conference for Trustees, Physicians, Executives, & Nurse Executives at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The conference, which focused on the subject of governance, was organized by The Governance Institute. Although not a new term, governance has taken a much higher profile in both for profit and not for profit organizations. At a very high level governance aims to assure that an organization produces a pattern of good results while avoiding an undesirable pattern of bad circumstances. The Governance Institute focuses on helping hospitals achieve best practices among the leading healthcare boards across the country.
The conference included three days of speeches, Q&A, and breakout sessions that covered many topics including clarification of a hospital board’s basic fiduciary duties and core responsibilities, exploration of "best practices" of high-performing boards, understanding of various hospital-physican relationships and complexities of physician credentialing and privileging, approaches to hospital financial planning and capital allocation, and an analysis of the healthcare reform (and cost) being advocated by the various political candidates.
Governance can be a complex topic but at a high level it is mostly common sense. The way I think about it, good governance means being financially efficient but not pushing so hard on the numbers as to cause people to do unnatural things in order to "make" the numbers, focusing on how the leadership of the organization is selected and how they are paid, being transparent with the various stakeholders so they understand the decisions that are made and the rationale behind them, and insuring personal accountability is in place at all levels.
Although governance was the main focus of the conference, all of the speakers had some predictions about where things are headed with American healthcare. It was not a pretty picture. Costs are going to cointinue to escalate to the point where they are a huge part of the economy and exceed the cost of primary and secondary education at the state level. As costs rise they will be pushed toward hospitals and pressures will continue between payers (insurers) and providers. Primary care physicians, already in short supply in many areas, will be in even shorter supply as new graduates seek out speciality areas with more economic potential. As the cost of running a medical practice continues to increase many doctors will choose to become employees of hospitals. Hospitals will consolidate and as they gain economy of scale they will implement electronic medical records and become highly efficient providers of high quality care. Although America does not today offer the highest quality health care in the world, there is significant progress being made toward curing cancer and heart disease. The glass is half full, not half empty.
There was not a lot of spare time but enough to get in a look around the Greenbrier’s spectacular 3,500+ acres, have a good hike up Kates Mountain Road, and also locate a benchmark near the old White Sulphur Springs train station (a few pictures in the photo gallery). That brings cumulative benchmarks found to eighty-eight. Some of my colleagues took a tour of the Bunker but we had been there before.
Other patrickWeb stories about healthcare
Pictures from 2002 trip to the Bunker
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 7, 2007 in
Geocaching,
Hiking When I wrote about the global sport of geocaching in July 2005, there were 181,216 active geocaches in 215 countries and in the prior 7 days there had been been 138,512 new log entries written at geocaching.com by 24,318 participants. As of today there are 423,816 active caches worldwide. In the last 7 days, there have been 325,387 new logs written by 45,911 account holders. In other words geocaching has doubled in the past two years. I suspect it will double again in the next two years. Although my own enthusiasm has not diminished, I haven’t had nearly as many "finds" due to the extensive travel schedule so far this year. (I did manage to find one in St. Petersburg, Russia).
Today was a perfect day to add geocache #76 to my record, so I set out for Kipp Island in the morning before the Lake got busy. There are too many rocks close to shore to go there by boat unless you want to anchor and swim ashore. Instead I went on the jetski. The island is located in Pike County Pennsylvania and is one of four islands on Lake Wallenpaupack. It is roughly 1,000 feet long and a width less than 100 feet at the widest part. In spite of the small size, the Tupperware cache was well hidden and the GPS signal wavered due to the dense trees and other vegetation. The huge number of bugs did not help either. Five of us searched for more than a half hour last summer and could not find it, so it felt very good to have a fairly quick (and lucky) find. After signing the logbook and entering TNLN (took nothing left nothing) at geocaching.com it was off for a ride. Tomorrow is supposed to be 90 degrees so it will be a good day to stay inside and write about my early experience with the new iPhone.
Other patrickWeb stories about geocaching
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 12, 2006 in
Benchmarking,
Hiking 
There are currently 736,425 benchmarks in the database at geocaching.com. Overall, 82,517 benchmarks have been found and recorded in 114,528 logs. In the last 7 days, 1,007 benchmarks have been logged by 407 users. Four of them were found by me in Greentown, Pennsylvania near Exit 20 of Interstate 84.
I had tried to find a 1959 benchmark named "Burke" a couple of months ago. The eXplorist 600 indicated that I was within a half-mile of and then I realized I would have to trespass on private property to get to the mark — something I do not do, at least on purpose. I saw a sign nearby labeled Robert Burke Consulting. Upon visiting his web site and seeing that he works with Linux, I concluded he must be a nice person and likely would not mind me giving him a call. Not only did he not mind, he offered to escort me to the benchmark — he had noticed it in the past and knew right where it was. I met Bob and his four-year old son at his driveway and off we went in his four-wheel drive truck down a dirt road and off into a field. Turns out that Bob’s father owns hundreds of acres of land where the benchmark is located. Five generations of his family have lived in Pennsylvania.
Turns out that there are actually four benchmarks (Burke, Burke 2, Burke Reference Mark 1, and Burke Reference Mark 2) all within a couple of hundred feet of each other. Three were placed in 1959 and one in 1967. The descriptions given are accurate for finding them — but don’t rely on lat/lon because those are not accurate. One of them was off by nearly 200 feet. Ater many a wild goose chase, I have learned that the best way to find benchmarks is to carefully read the datasheet. Here is a typical description for finding a reference mark…
REFERENCE MARK 1, A STANDARD DISK STAMPED BURKE NO 1 1959, IS CEMENTED IN A DRILL HOLE IN TOP OF A 2 X 3 FOOT BOULDER IRREGULAR IN SHAPE AND PROJECTING ABOUT 2 INCHES ABOVE THE SURFACE OF THE GROUND. IT IS 85.9 FEET SOUTHEAST OF AN 8-INCH TRIANGULAR BLAZED MAPLE TREE, 72.8 FEET SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF A STANDARD METAL WITNESS POST AND MARKER, 37 FEET SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF THE CENTER OF A TRACK ROAD AND THE MARK IS ABOUT THE SAME ELEVATION AS THE STATION
The disks were all readable, although there is some corrosion. All are in plain view and the main mark (Burke) has a witness post. If you ever noticed a 3-4 foot long orange stick in the ground with some wording on it, that would be a witness post. It says basically, there is a benchmark nearby and don’t mess with it! The marks would have been useful to surveyors and civil engineers decades ago, but with the advent of inexpensive and accurate GPS devices, they have become unnecessary. In spite of this, they are fun to find — 72 for me so far and only three-quarters of a million or so to go! Lastly, remember the Honda ads from years ago — "You meet the nicest people on a Honda"? Well, this past weekend I discovered the same thing about looking for benchmarks. If you need any systems or Linux consulting in the northeast Pennsylvania area, pay a visit to Robert Burke Consulting.
Other patrickWeb stories about benchmarking
Posted by John Patrick on May 11, 2006 in
Hiking 
The traffic on the way to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania today was horrible. Makes you want a helicopter — too bad they are unaffordable. The Lehigh University Engineering Advisory Board had a nice reception and dinner. Tomorrow we spend the day focusing on university programs to integrate engineering and business curricula. After dinner I did some benchmarking.
The first mark was just down the lawn in front of the university center (the UC as we used to call it). I had seen the flagpole many times back in the 1960′s when I was a student there but never knew there was a benchmark in the stone wall around the flagpole. The pole used to be wood and is now steel but the foundation is the same and has been there since 1935 (ten years before I was born).
The second mark was at a train station just north of the river. The benchmark disk was inside the entrance doors to the station which is now a restaurant. It was placed there in 1932.
The oldest mark I have ever found was next. It was at a beautiful church. The mark was the spire at the top of the steeple — placed there in 1885. The church would have been easy to find in the daytime but late at night in the rain it was more difficult.
I am very fortunate to be spending the night at the Sayre Mansion.
