And THAT is what restrictions help with and why I use them!!!

Happy anniversary, trivia buddy!

This seems like a good time to point out that it is possible to add these to boxes listed on AQ for your own benefit. AQ doesn't use the coordinates for anything, and it doesn't display them publicly, but I too find it useful to sometimes have the precise coordinates where I planted a box and it's handy to have it listed right with the box. =)

-- Ryan

When I attach to trees for one-day events, I typically use a bag, not a box. I get neutral colored burlap draw-string bags and then you can use clothes pins to attach to smaller branches. I've even used the large plant clips that you can get to support the stalks of tomato plants and such. These methods make retrieval and re-attachment easy for the guests.

We've used zip ties on limbs.

If you don't want the attaching mechanism obvious, try monofilament fishing line. The box will rotate in the wind, though.

I'm a bit late for the beginning of summer, but I've put up the summer fundraiser banner on the LbNA home page which will stay up for a week or two.

I haven't actually created a new LTC yet, but I will send a different one than I did last year along with a special... well, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the LTC will come with something extra special and (as far as I know), a letterboxing first. The catch, however, is that it won't likely be ready until the end of summer at the earliest. So be patient with the LTC. I'll send them, but it'll be a bit of wait!

The rest of the swag is the same as last year and should ship within a week of a donation.

As for my future plans for the LbNA site over the next year--in case you wanted to know what you'd be "investing" in. Long-term, I want to connect duplicate boxes that are listed on both LbNA and AQ so edits and find/attempt reports on one will show up on the other automatically if you have accounts on both.

Last year, I got a system working so LbNA and AQ could actually "talk" to each other (which is why account trailnames, passwords and other account settings can be changed on one site while being updated on both websites).

I actually did start working on recording duplicate finds/attempts for both sites, but that's turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought. The finds/attempts are stored in radically different ways on each website that aren't entirely compatible. (For instance, AQ has four levels of "attempts" but LbNA does not--how should those be mapped to LbNA attempts and vise-versa? I'm kind of thinking about updating LbNA to also have the same types of attempts so they can be mapped one-to-one.)

Another issue I need to deal with are how locations are handled. LbNA and AQ use totally different methods for storing locations in the database, and they aren't at all compatible. And now that Google has started charging me actual money for geocoding services, I want to reduce those calls to save costs.

I actually have already created my own custom "AQ geocoder" that LbNA can call in an attempt to lookup unknown locations. So, for instance, if someone tries to search for a town that LbNA doesn't know about (for sake of an example, let's say it's Seattle--but LbNA definitely already knows about Seattle!), LbNA can ask AQ first "Hey, do you know this town? What are the details?"

And if AQ can find it in it's own database, it'll return the data. If it can't find it, then AQ can look up the location from Google's geocoder. And if Google can't find it (or is unavailable for some reason), then AQ can ask Microsoft's geocoder about it. (This used to be a "Bing" service, but they actually are retiring that... tomorrow, I think? So I've replaced it with their new "Azure" geocoding service.) And if the location is found in the Google or Microsoft geocoder, the results are stored in the AQ database so it'll be accessible to both AQ and LbNA in the future without additional costs by querying them for the same information over and over again.

And finally, if that fails, AQ will just say that the location could not be found.

Anyhow, a lot of this work has been done. Setting up a special "AQ geocoder" that LbNA can use and replacing the retiring Bing geocoder with the Azure replacement. (That was work done on the AQ side of things.)

However, LbNA still needs to be updated to actually ask AQ for locations, but because it's structured so completely differently than AQ, that's actually quite a bit of effort. The nice thing is, however, is that once it's done, not only will it save money by not having both LbNA and AQ ask the Google geocoder about the same locations, but it'll make LbNA a bit more robust allowing it to pull locations from up to three different sources (AQ's database, Google, and Microsoft), and provide at least one backup in the event that Google or Microsoft's services are down temporarily. (And, in fact, they are both still available as backups if the AQ service is down temporarily, which does happen sometimes when I do updates.)

All-in-all, saves money, it's more robust, and more reliable.

So... that's what's in store for LbNA. It's actually a huge amount of work and I'm not sure I'll get it all done in one year (I have other stuff I need to work on too!), but that's what I plan to spend most of my LbNA time working on.

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

How do I change my password on LbNA?

How to change Password:
Sign in
At the top of the page, Choose Members
Choose Members Services
You will see a box on the far left titled Account info
Click on the pencil to the right of the password.
It will then let you create a new password.

Hope this helps.
Blue Butterfly

At last made a donation

Oh, a fundraiser! Everyone loves a good fundraiser!

You can’t have a fundraiser without the word “fun”!

PS Good morning, Hate to beat this in the head but please consider making sure the isn't something wrong with the location of Holden, Maine. I noticed 8 boxes of Damselfly with the same wrong location attached to the beginning. Clues indicate correct place to find the stamps. Only the location is off.

If I'm remembering correctly, sometimes things autofill. Just something we noticed this week. 9 incorrection locations between two different players clues. No one else that I can see. Weird.

Thanks for checking it out. We will fix our boxes. Most likely retire them due to this issue. This is no fun for anyone. Especially the out-of-Stater who pined all the stamps on her locator. *hugs*

Ryan, thanks for continuing to work on LbNA. Finding old boxes from that site is one of the things I love about letterboxing. I’m looking forward to the swag!

As an ally who has LGBTQ family and friends, I love today’s theme! Thank you for supporting this community, Ryan!

That’s a great idea! I often plant at places without a precise address and have trouble putting the pin in the correct spot on AQ. Maybe this would help.

There is something going on with the location "Clewleyville Cemetery, Eastern Ave & Mann Hill Rd, Holden, ME" Boxes currently listed with this location include Box #319471 #315877 #196207 #119104 #326884 #55256 but only one box #319471 might actually be at the cemetery. Most of the boxes appear to be near the elementary school.

It is a red pin on the map, so the radius does include the school, but it seems that the location should be named "Holden, ME" instead of the specific cemetery.

Also want to mention that clicking on "View Map" for that odd location will take you to the Holden post office which is nowhere near the cemetery.

Thank you for your help and I'm writing this off as a glitch and plan on "fixing" the locations. For the correct locations of my listed boxes, all you have to do is click the clues and it states right in my clues exactly where said box is located, not in the map section. Most of my planted boxes do not have a physical address because it doesn't receive mail. Most of them only have a Street, Town and State.
I haven't had any issues until recently about locations. All that have seeked these out haven't had a issue.
I did also notice while scrolling through my plant lists that the event boxes I have listed in the past for events at my house Pin The Location to a nearby cemetery. I do know that when I listed them it was listed as "limited time" and only the town and then added to the event page for everyone who joined to grab. My actual address was emailed out to everyone who was coming so I didnt have to publicly post it. All of those letterboxes were retired after my hosted event. Could just putting a town and state mess with the maps Location?

I found a box once that was inside a suet feeder. The feeder was hung from a branch on the tree, but could be tied on as well. If you need your finders to see the picture on the box, it would be visible through the grid of the feeder.

This location was set to something a bit east of the town. Generally speaking, the first person to add a location sets the GPS coordinates for it. Subsequent people can suggest edits by changing the coordinates if it's not in the correct place, at which point a moderator can check which is the correct location and set it manually.

But yes, the town of Holden was off by a few miles. It also didn't have a county name included, which I've added as well, so it'll show up in county searches as well.

That location should be working better now.

I'll also point out, just in case it's not obvious, locations of addresses within a town are NOT the same as the location of the town. They are two entirely different entries in the database with absolutely no overlap. If a town is incorrect in the database, that doesn't mean there's a problem with the individual addresses within the town. (Or vice-versa.) As far as AQ is concerned, they are two entirely different locations with their own set of coordinates.

-- Ryan

There's already a location for the town of Holden, and AQ doesn't want two cities with the name name in the same state in the same county, so that's not going to work.

I'd rather fix the location for the cemetery (which was definitely not listed in the correct location--it also had a very bad radius of over 5 miles which is absurd since the whole town isn't even that large), so I've done that.

I can edit the locations of the boxes so they're in the town rather than the cemetery, though.

The data in the database is only as good as the information people put into it.

-- Ryan

Thanks so much for making some necessary adjustments, regardless of why they were necessary. If you have a few spare moments perhaps you could correct all other location errors on AQ?

Just kidding of course. Really appreciate all that you do, especially your willingness to chase down whatever odd thing that might crop up.

Thank you

Thank you.

Thank yoi

At recent event they had a camo duct tape pouch and hole punch a hole in the corner and used brown pipe cleaner/chenille sticks to wrap around a branch of a tree.... blended in pretty well and temporary and secure and removeable

Well, you guy have convinced me to remove the option to edit locations. Too much bad data is being entered, usually by accident by people who don't really understand how it works, but sometimes deliberately by people who want to have specific coordinates for a location but not actually list an accurate address.

I had actually added maps of locations when they are entered for a box in the hopes of cutting down these sorts of incorrect locations, but that doesn't seem to have helped. Now that Google is starting to charge me for using those maps, perhaps I'll change it into a premium member perk at some point.

Anyhow.... I've never actually found the remote geocoders to have an incorrect city, and every single case of an incorrect location for a city in the AQ database is an instance of a user error somewhere. Which not only creates bad results, but causes more work for me to fix these broken locations.

So.... the editing of locations returned from the geocoders is banned. Generally speaking, they are pretty good and rarely introduce errors themselves. The problem comes when people try to edit a location that isn't quite what they wanted or if the geocoders can't find a precise match for a specified location so they try to edit a location that the geocoder did return.

You can still add a new location, so if a geocoder cannot find a correct location, you can add it yourself manually. But in the future, you will not be able to edit information returned from the geocoders.

Of course, this does not fix any locations in the database that have already been corrupted, but if you come across one of those, report it to the moderators and they can fix it.

Hopefully, over time, the amount of incorrect locations will become more negligible.

-- Ryan

I'm pretty sure that's not what I suggested. I suggested using the "horse" keyword to let people know it's on a horse trail and be able to search for those.

The special gear icon is for boxes that require special gear in order to find. Unless you planted it on a horse trail where walking isn't allowed, a horse is not required and therefore the special gear icon is not appropriate. I've never heard of a horse trail that only horses are allowed on (i.e. no pedestrians), so I kind of doubt that's appropriate.

-- Ryan

Spotted a cake on My Page this morning and it seems to be my 17th AQ Anniversary! (Is the cake a one day thing and I was just lucky enough to sign in today and notice? ♥) Went to Bassett Mom's birthdayEvent yesterday. Rain did NOT ruin our parade! (much)
And it was the BEST Chocolate Chocolate Cupcake EVER in my life :)