Many people are mourning the death of itsnotaboutthenumbers.com. This excellent website was many cachers’premier resource for their Geocaching statistics because it provided a map of the UK Counties showing the colours of the individual county according to cache finds.
GSAK also has this functionality when you combine the macro FindStatGen3.x. This mini tutorial will hopefully provide an easy step by step to reproduce that counties map for your Geocaching.com profile.
There are,of course,a few pre-requisites before following the tutorial:
- You must have GSAK installed. It’s available at the GSAK website. The application is free to download and try with a 21 day free trial. After this date the nag screen wait time increases. If you are serious about your caching then (in my humble opinion) this application is very much worth it. Registration is a measly $25 US. You can even pay by PayPal!
- You must be a premium member on geocaching.com. This is required so that you can download the “MyFinds”pocket query. Again,if you are a serious cacher then premium membership is a must. The other benefits of premium membership are well documented on the many geocaching websites and do not need to be repeated here. Do they??
- You should have created a database within GSAK to hold your MyFinds pocket query and have the pocket query imported into that database. Again,this is well documented,both on the GSAK website and elswhere on the ‘nets.
Okay,you ready for some stats and maps goodness? Excellent!
if you have GSAK Open,close it!
1. You need to download the FindStatGen macro. It is available at the macro repository on the GSAK website/ The link will take you straight to the appropriate place. Scroll to the very bottom of the website and you will see something similar to this:
Depending on your operating system,click the underline “FindStatGen3.gsk”and choose “save link as”. Allow it to save to your favourite downloads folder then go find it…
Right click and copy the file FindStatGen3.gsk. Locate the where GSAK is installed,in many cases it’s c:\gsak. It could also be c:\Program Files\gsak. You need to go to c:\gsak\Macros and paste the FindStatGen3.gsk file in there. Once you’ve done this you should see two files:
Still with me? Good!
You’re doing great! Now comes the fun bit!
Start GSAK and change the database to your “Found Caches”database. This should have been created and populated with your MyFinds.gpx data before starting!
3. Referring to the image above,change to the MyFinds database (circled) and then go to “Macro >Run/Manage”in the menu along the top.
4. You should see something like the image below:
We need to install the new FinStatGen macro so that we can run it. Click “Install”(look at the image above) and when you see the image below click the folder icon. Locate FindStatGen3.gsk in c:\gsak\Macros and click “Open”. You may need to look under “Computer”to locate the file.
Press the install button. Assuming that you’ve got it right you should now see:
Feel free to stop for a cuppa if you like…
5. Make sure the that new “FindStatGen3.gsk”Macro is highlighted and click run. Twiddle your thumbs for a moment or two and eventually you will see
This is where it gets complicated. Sure you don’t want that cuppa?
6. Click “Options”
As this tutorial is mainly concerned with the Counties map for the UK,I am going to ignore most of the other settings,except to point you to the two ringed sections.
Make sure that the “Found caches Database”(red circle) is set to your “Found caches”database,and then hit the “Maps”button (blue circle).
At the bottom of the new window (circled) click “Install Map Data Files from GSAK”
You should see “United Kingdom –County”as in the picture below. be careful,there’s TWO UK entries…
Choose “United Kingdom –County”and click install. You should now see similar to below:
Make sure that “United Kingdom –County is installed and click “OK”.
Breathe! Is it time for another cuppa yet?
7. You should now be back at the main options screen. Make sure that your Geocaching.com username is in the top right hand corner (circled yellow) and hit “Save”(circled red).
Ready? Hit OK!
Assuming that you have done everything right then the macro should run and eventually (it takes a while!) your favourite web browser should pop up with your statistics in. Scroll down and there should be your counties map!!
W00t and a big pat on the back for you! When you see the page in your browser,the code will have been copied to your clipboard on your machine. All you need to do is edit your public profile on gc.com and paste the information in.
Now,it is possible to change the order of the statistics,but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet…
It’s also possible to change the colours of the shaded areas,but again,I haven’t played yet…
I hope you have found this tutorial of some use,please let me know if you are confused or I have got anything wrong!
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