Month: August 2015

Featured contest sponsor: How to Puzzle Cache

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product_thumbnail.phpOur featured sponsor for our August 2015 5th Anniversary contest is Cully Long, Author of the book How to Puzzle Cache. He is graciously donating two copies of the book as prizes for two lucky winners. You may remember this blog interviewed Cully (Caching name ChildofAtom) about this book in December 2014. Rather than pester him with another interview, we asked Cully if he could give us an update on how things were going with himself and his H2PC effort since we last talked to him. He was happy to oblige:

First, I’d like to thank everyone for the attention and support that
How To Puzzle Cache has received! The book has sold incredibly well, selling copies in a dozen countries, both through me and through a variety of geocaching supply stores around the world. I was also welcomed with open arms at GeoWoodstock this year, selling out of my (admittedly small) book stock before 11am, but I got to meet a lot of readers, sign books and talk to people about puzzles, which is always the best part. I’ve also joined the geocaching community with appearances on Podcacher, and the GeoGearheads podcasts.In the coming months I will be releasing the digital e-book version, and announcing a secret initiative that I think everyone will be very excited about. I also have a few other geocaching publishing endeavors under way, and of course I continue to put out quality puzzle caches for my local cache area.

To learn more about the book, and how to buy it, check out his website at howtopuzzlecache.com. Don’t forget our interview with him on this blog, posted December 23rd, 2014, and check out his interview with Sonny and Sandy on Podcacher episode 497, recorded December 14th, 2014.

OCNA 5th Anniversary Locationless Event

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Birthday-Cake-Clip-ArtPlease join us to celebrate our 5th Anniversary tonight, Tuesday August 18th at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, for what we believe may be the first sanctioned Geocaching event streamed on the website ustream.tv. We are certainly not the first to stream a Geocaching event, that honor goes to The Dirtbag Geocaching Society; but we at OCNA allow this type of event to occur, unlike other Geocaching websites.

You can see the event page here, and it will be hosted on DudleyGrunt’s ustream channel. Note: You will not need a ustream account to participate. And we definitely have at least one recent newsworthy Geocaching topic to discuss; the closure of a similarly named website with which we are not affiliated, that is (was) owned by a major GPS Manufacturer. 🙂

What is a Cache-Advance Cache Crate?

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CacheCrateColor_200One of the generous prizes donated for our 5th Anniversary Contest is a Cache Crate from one of the longest tenured Geocaching retailers in the world, Cache-Advance. What exactly is a Cache Crate? It could be described as a membership based service where you receive a surprise box full of Geocaching and outdoor gear delivered to your house. Cache-Advance themselves describe it as “just like finding an awesome regular sized cache filled with amazing swag”.

Membership Levels:

Cache Crates ship out on a monthly basis, although they do offer some memberships where you don’t receive them every single month. There are 6 levels of membership:

  • 3 Month gift membership for $60 ($20/month)
  • Annual membership for $228 ($19/month)
  • 6 Month membership for $120 ($20/month)
  • Monthly membership ($22/month)
  • Every other month membership ($23/every other month)
  • Quarterly membership (a Cache Crate every 3rd month) ($24/month)

Cache Crate unboxing gone viral on YouTube:

A Google search of “cache crate unboxing” shows at least 4 Geocaching Vloggers have made videos of them opening up a Cache Crate. Here we have the June 2015 unboxing by one time OCNA guest blogger The Geocaching Doc. This is the same video shown on the Cache Crate Membership page on Cache-Advance’s website. Do check that out, and consider buying a membership for yourself or a gift membership for someone else. We thank Lisa from Cache-Advance for the donation for our contest.


P.S. What happened to The Geocaching Doc on this blog?

Oh, about 3 months ago, YouTube forced developers to migrate to the latest version of their API. You might remember in 2014 a similar directive issued by Google Maps threw ours (as well as fellow alternative site Terracaching.com’s) cache maps into a tizzy. Both have since been fixed. The plug in that posted The GCDoc’s latest video on this blog was not compliant. We did hear of a small coding fix, and it worked for about a month, then abruptly stopped working again. We are looking at other plug in options, and are confident we can come up with something.

OCNA Admin DudleyGrunt on the Cache and Release Geocaching Podcast

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candrOCNA Admin DudleyGrunt appeared on yet another Geocaching Podcast on Sunday August 9th, 2015: The Cache and Release Geocaching podcast. DG was mainly on the show to talk about our website and our 5th anniversary contest, but he and host Michael Miller discuss several topics, including recent Geocaching News, and Geowoodstock. The Cache and Release Geocaching Podcast is recorded on Sunday Nights. It was created with a very simple goal in mind: To inform and entertain. The show, produced weekly, will keep listeners up to date with the latest geocaching news and related subjects. Listeners will also have the opportunity to listen to interviews that broaden the scope of the show by bringing in other geocachers and pundits. In addition, the Cache and Release Podcast seeks to entertain listeners with topical and off topical commentary and subject matter. The end result should be a show that is well produced and considered a leader not only within the geocaching community, but also within the podcasting community.

You can listen to the audio version on their website, or subscribe to it through iTunes, RSS, or Android, watch the shows on YouTube, and check them out on FaceBook, Google+, Pinterest and Twitter.