Tools

During Texas Challenge, I was asked about a few of the things we did and, more specifically, how we did them.  I answered to the best of my ability, of course.  Some of them were just brawn, experience, and gumption, but a couple of them have some useful tools.  I resolved to make a post about them once I had a chance, but I let it go for a minute while I was in the throes of recuperation.  Now that I am feeling human again, it’s time to finally fulfill my resolution or some kind of crap like that.

Many Events have some kind of geo-bingo.  What set our apart was that each card was unique.  It wasn’t enough to just trade signatures on identical and interchangeable cards.  You might have the same condition on each card, but being in different places on the card changed everything.  And with 66 options possible on a card with 24 squares (the middle square only needed the signature of a geocacher, making it effectively free), some cards were easier or harder than others.  Indeed, the dreaded “Is a Reviewer or Lackey” square had a few folks uptight for a minute but was fixed by the attendance of a Lackey on Saturday, the arrival of our local reviewer (I heard previously that he wasn’t able to come), and the completely unexpected presence of a former reviewer from California. My point here (and I do have one) is that you all have a Redditor to thank for it. He created a bingo card generation site that does all the things you could want: card design and arrangement options, color options, variable sizes, and (most importantly) a random generation option. Tell it how many cards you want it to make for you and it will generate them as PDFs for easy printing. It also numbers every unique card so all I did was have someone with me to generate random numbers between one and the highest numbered card that was turned in. It was easy to generate the winners that way and it’s easy to have a paper trail to prove your game was run with integrity.

As for the geoarts, I was not in direct control of those. They were created by psychosesteemed cachers with far more experience than I have. That said, we were all looking at a new tool for generating coordinates. It has an easy to use grid into which you can “draw” your art. Then all you have to do is pick a central point on the area map, pick a distance between points, and then click “Generate Coordinates”! It’ll superimpose your points onto the map so you can see how it’ll look and then give you a list of coords for each point. As someone who is art challenged and math tired, I welcome such a tool. I wouldn’t want to hand calculate all those coords just to have a crappy blob. This takes a lot of that work off my hands. Heck, it makes me want to make my own geoart (though I honestly have no idea how I would theme it)!

I know I was asked about other stuff, but these are the only ones I can remember right now. If I think of someone else, I’ll make a note of it somewhere. Otherwise, I’m gonna call it with these. The Mega is finally getting off my mind and it’s well past time to go on to new things.