Re: GC9A7Z5 - Friendly checker request - Travel the world in 80 days

To apply for a green checker the cacher shall meet the following requirement:

The checker turns green when
- finds with a summary distance of 40,075 km from the own home to the individual caches
- have been found and logged within a period of 80 consecutive days from your 366 matrix (just as in the novel by Jules Verne ;-))

- Limiting constraint: Only one cache applies per country traveled.

Thank you for checking the possibilities of programming :-)
Kind regards, TomatenTheo+Tante

Please see "READ FIRST" https://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,8362,8362#msg-8362

What a checker can not do
* The checkers does not have access to the user's home coordinates. Challenges are not allowed to be based upon them either, and haven't been allowed to for several years. This is a matter of integrity.

Dear vogelbird,

thank you for reminding us about the set of rules.
Indeed we read it already a year ago at the beginning of the Pandemic. But sometimes all such knowledge is suddenly swept away by an (almost) brilliant new idea. Sorry about it.

In order to overcome the inaccessibility of the home coordinates our listing (https://coord.info/GC9A7Z5) has gotten a specific waypoint "Your journey starts here" ( N 51° 02.980 E 013° 44.280 ).
Would this approach solve the issue and is compliant to our guidelines?

Have a pleasant Friday evening,
TomatenTheo+Tante

I'm sorry but this is also not allowed anymore since the introduction of the hiding guidelines.

Please read https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=127&pgid=206#criteria

Not acceptable

Quote
Challenges based on geographic areas other than countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent). For example, user-defined mapping polygons, latitude/longitude, radius, etc.

Hi vogelbird,

one more thought please:

Within a period of 80 days (from the 366 matrix - so the year does not matter) caches should have been found in different countries, so that the sum of the distances of the respective caches from Dresden adds up to the circumference of the earth (40075 km). Only one cache may be used per country.

The coordinates of the challenge itself are used to calculate the distance.
This should be in accordance with the guidelines.

For the fulfillment of the challenge only one cache per country is necessary, geographic patterns, polygons, radii etc. do not play a role. It is only about adding up distances until the circumference of the earth is reached with different countries.
As of our understanding of the guidelines, this should be permissible for a challenge.
This challenge could be fulfilled for example with three caches in very distant countries (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea) or with many countries in Europe or with less countries in Asia...
A similar challenge is cache GC72R77, but here the number is set to max 8. We leave the number free, taking instead the time limit of 80 days from Jules Verne's novel.

Kind regards, TomatenTheo+Tante

I have sent a request to the scriptwriter for assistance because I don't get your config setting to work

Forgive me for not completely understanding your vision.

My intial read is : Any number of caches, over a period of 80 consecutive month, day pairs of the 366 with the distance between them being one trip around the world.

Have you given any thought as to how distances would combine if say someone had caches on May 1, 2010, and May 1, 2011?
Or are you saying use only one each day month pair using no more than 80 day month pairs?

I am trying to figure out how to strike a balance between your theme (which I like but don't fully understand) and something that is computationally feasible.

The most straight forward to implement is one cache per day/month pair and pick the 80 longest. Doing the search for 80 consecutive is also possible but a bit more challenging.

80 Consecutive "days" would look like:
Jan 1 GCXXXXYYXX 4300km
Jan 2 GCXXXXYYXB 4200km
Jan 3 GCXXXXYYXC 4200km
Jan 4 GCXXXXYYXD 5400km
....
Mar 2 GCXXXXYYXq 300km
Mar 3? GCXXXXYYXR 300km


The 80 longest days would look more like:
Jan 15 GCBLAHBLAH 400km
Feb 19 GCBLAHBLECK 200km
...
August 19 GCWHOWHERE 2000km

Can you help me understand what you are looking for?

Thanks.

Dear sloth96,

Thank you for picking up our idea to pour it into line of code.
We, TomatenTheo+Tante, like algorythms, too :-)

Allow us to come back tonight with a more precise description of the flow and the possible steps of verification.

Kind regards, Uwe+Ulrike (aka TomatenTheo+Tante)

PS.: May we ask where you are located/living?
Have you read Jules Verne‘s novel „Around the world in 80 days“? It‘s worth but quite antique :-)

Just thinking more aloud, doing the 80 days in a year sounds easier to implement. the 80 "consecutive" days have an issue around leap years. Do they need to do a Feb 29 or not for Feb 28 and Mar 1 to be connected?

Probably easier to just grab the 80 longest days.

The idea behind our challenge is based on the novel by Jules Verne: "Journey Around the Earth in 80 Days".
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days )
To make this idea conform to the guidelines, we take away the year reference and only look at the 366 matrix for all cache finds.
We would like to use each country only once (only one cache per country). 2 countries can bring in a find on the same day (in another year probably).

For us a fulfillment would be possible e.g. with the following caches:

07.7.(2017) 1940 km GC5ET0N Norge
15.7.(2017) 9045km GC5CVP8 Japan
7/18(2019) 8578km GC84YNW Cuba
7/19(2016) 3634km GC3A29F Spain
7/27(2018) 1302 km GC1C5F GB
Aug 15(2013) 3555 km GC2WWJ4 Portugal
Aug 17(2014) 1600 km GC1W06N Ireland
Aug 18(2011) 7947 km GC4P93T Botswana
Aug 21(2011) 7754 km GCGZZ6 Zambia
Aug 28(2020) 512 km GC26A9 Poland
Sep 03(2016) 8596 km GCZV80 Thailand
...

80 days could start 7/7 and go to 9/25. Thus Brazil (GC347HZ 9.10.16 9930km) unfortunately does not fall into the period, but is not needed.

Maybe an algorithm could be like this:
Make a list of all countries where caches have already been found.
We start on 1.1. was a cache found - in which country? Note the distance, delete the country from the list. Look on 2.1. - other country ? If yes - add the distance, delete the country from the list... look until 19.3. - is the distance enough? If not, everything from the beginning with 2.1. etc.

We hope, this helps you to code a checker?

Curious of it works and could be approved, if so I will copy the idea.

When looking at your impressive list of countries you have been to we are sure you will accomplish the mission of the challenge twice - at least :-)

Greetz - TT+T

Just to make sure I understand,
Pick an 80 day window. (still not sure how to handle leap years)
Find some number of days less than 80 where sum of distances is greater than the 40k number above.
Distance is defined as distance to a found cache in a country from the home point above on that date.
Cannot reuse a country in that 80 day window.

Before worrying too much about the implementation, I am still trying to understand the requirements. As I cannot understand them, there is a chance, the reviewers and other will not as well.

Thank you for thinking about our challenge :-)

Yes, you are on the right track. The described procedure is correct.

For the exceptional case of February 29, we suggest: If this rare day has no find, when counting the 80 days the 28.2. is followed by just the 1.3. The gap of the 29. February is skipped.

In case a relevant cache was found in the 366 matrix on 2/29, it counts. If so, the window can be 1 day shorter or (if this is easier to program) take the 29.2. as a "bonus day". Then there is a window of 81 days.
We formulate the challenge around the exception if necessary.

@ Dirkverschuren And i will be there to find it first :P



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2021 03:02PM by Dunaghiri. (view changes)

I am still trying to figure out how to make this fast enough for users with many countries on many days.

Oh I just noticed something. The 2 countries in a day are allowed. Are 80 countries in a single day allowed? I think my best is 5 countries in a day. If that is so, that makes it much simpler because it is just finding the maximum in that 80 day window for each country. The need to deconflict countries and dates is eliminated.

Of course - 1 to n countries per day are allowed :-) Thank You for asking and helping us with this checker.

Greetings from Dresden, TomatenTheo und Tante

Does this look right to you for your caching?

2019-03-02 France GC7TQMM 852.161554
2019-02-14 Vatican City State GC30H3P 1021.647001
2016-03-18 Togo GC4ZH64 4734.390381
2018-01-17 Russia GC29FNR 1653.854336
2018-02-13 Malta GC63JN3 1689.817209
2018-01-31 Taiwan GC3WTGA 9031.639529
2018-02-19 Germany GC10AZC 441.333034
2019-02-15 Italy GC65QWC 1035.34511
2017-03-28 Poland GC5BC0G 321.715948
2021-04-06 United States GC8NEAT 8295.498665
2018-03-23 Czechia GC6X8VD 119.68739
2019-01-23 Japan GC3VH23 9049.227041
2017-03-08 Thailand GC2M069 8612.321785


Also I noticed it contained the locationless cache GC8NEAT. Do you want locationless caches excluded?

This looks good for us :-) We also thought about the locationless and decided to exclude it (if that's easy to program)
Can the checker end up spending the sum of the distances?

Thank you!

Give this one a look https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC9A7Z5/60872

And you have an event on that list.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2021 01:37AM by sloth96. (view changes)

Dear sloth96,

many thanks for the checker. We would give you a favorite point if that would be possible :-)
To also consider Events is fine for us.
We particularly like your extra effort to picture all caches found on a world map. Brilliant idea! LIKE!!!

Greetings from Dresden, TomatenTheo + Tante

Good luck with the reviewer. When your challenge publishes it should show up on the map as well as a reference. It will just show as a mystery cache.

Hello,

I have an issue with this checker. During the last weeks I got every time a error message, when I tried to use the checker. I got the error message:
"[string ""]:52: attempt to compare boolean with number".

Hopefully there is someone who can check and fix it. Thanks a lot.

It looks like a scripting error which only the scriptwriter can fix

Please contact him directly by pressing the little envelope behind his name on the checker