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I was finally able to try Sandy’s suggestion, and it works, bringing the MP3 files into Pod Wrangler as podcasts. They appear under “Local MP3 Files” on the main menu. This means:
- While playing back, I can skip backward and forward by using the “<<” and “>>” buttons.
- Pod Wrangler remembered where I stopped listening when exiting the app, and started playing from that point when I went back in.
I haven’t worked out an easier way to do it yet, so for now I will follow these steps when a new MAPP show comes out. Note that Pod Wrangler is only available for iOS; I used BeyondPod on Android years ago, and it probably still supports the handling of local MP3 files as podcasts.
The steps for Pod Wrangler on iOS are:
- On computer, log into the Podcacher Clubhouse and go to the Listener Lounge.
- Click the link for “MAPP Show #XX”.
- Right-click on the “Listen to the Show” link and select “Copy link address” (Chrome) or “Copy link location: (Firefox) from the popup menu. I use Linux, so I’m not sure what it’s called in Internet Explorer or the new browser that comes with Windows 10.
- Paste that link into an email to myself.
- Open the email on phone or tablet and copy the link to the clipboard (on iOS 8, tap the link and hold until the pop-up menu appears, then select “Copy”).
- Open Pod Wrangler and tap “Add”, then “Add by MP3 file”. The URL box should be automatically filled with the URL copied in step 3.
- Tap the “Add” button.
The MAPP show will now appear under “Local MP3 Files” on the main menu. Note that what you see in the list is the MP3 file name, which doesn’t include the MAPP show number, so you can’t tell which is which if you have more than one show.
It’s not nearly as easy as listening to a regular show that comes through the podcast feed, but it only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s worth it to me to be able to go back and pick a show up where I stopped listening, and to back up and listen to the last 15 or 30 seconds if I got distracted for a bit.
Yes, skunks live in the woods around here, but I don’t often see them alive. It’s more likely that I’ll smell one in the evening, or see one as roadkill. I see snakes more often here, if you count rattlesnakes, copperheads, and coral snakes together. Armadillos are more common, though. It’s fun to catch them by sneaking up from downwind and picking them up by their thick, scaly tails. You have to hold on tight, though, because they twist and turn, and the tapered tail is slick and hard to grip. The reason you hold them by the tail is to stay away from the claws. What I learned as a small child is you don’t want to run up and kick one: I almost broke my toe. They’re heavy and hard.
When I hosted WWFM III in Austin, I named it “Armadillo Sighting”. The location was near the former site of Armadillo World Headquarters, a famous part of Austin live music history.
Yes, it’s sad when your garage has nothing but cars and junk in it. Well, at least mine also has quite a few geocaching containers and camo materials in it that may eventually be deployed some day.
Parties, usually, and church events, and the occasional jam session just for the fun of it. Not often enough, though.
I was the Geocaching Merit Badge counselor for my son’s troop, and on one of our camp-outs I set up a geocaching course with about a dozen caches of widely varying types, from the .50cal ammo can to the magnetic numbers that you peel off the propane tank and sign on the back. Also set up a Firetack course to do after dark. Wore me completely out. 🙂
I’d gone for “Fun with Favorites” a few days ago, finding a cool travel bug motel near my home. Then I got two souvenirs by accident today–“Meet Your Road Trip Crew” at a breakfast event this morning, and “Let’s Get Extreme” after that. I went to the event “because it was there”, and didn’t think about it counting toward the souvenir. And I hadn’t paid attention to the D/T rating of the other cache I found, but it’s 5/4.5. The difficulty rating of 5 is probably because you have to visit 14 other caches first and collect a card from each one, then arrange the 14 cards in such a way as to find the coordinates of the re-director to the final. The terrain 4.5 is because the slope up to the cache is about 45 degrees, worse in places. And it’s a LONG hike. Took me 2 1/2 hours to get up and back down. CITOed out two bags of trash and a volleyball. This cache (GC1CQ78) is a mystery cache with 37 favorite points, so it could have filled the requirements for three of the souvenirs–but it’s my “Extreme”.
My two GPSMAP 60CSx units are my favorite when I am caching in dense forest or wherever there are no visible landmarks in Google Maps, or when ground zero is saturated with potential hiding spots and I feel accuracy is important as a time saver. The dedicated unit is the only choice when I need to measure coordinates or project a waypoint, as I don’t know how to average coordinates or project waypoints with the phone apps I use.
But I find most caches these days using my iPhone 4s and GeoSphere, occasionally pushing waypoints to Pocket Earth for road navigation. If necessary, that all works offline. Only the phone lets me store so much cache detail, including past logs, and I can usually find a cache faster using satellite photo landmarks than using the GPSr pointer. If there are no landmarks or I search a while and find nothing, I will key the coordinates into the GPSr.
The one limitation that my GPSrs have “developed” is that I don’t have any utility to transfer waypoints and track logs to and from them now that I am using Linux on my laptop and tower PCs. Anyone know a good solution?
I started caching with a Garmin GPS III Plus. It could be held in either portrait or landscape mode, and the antenna swiveled to work in either orientation–or could be detached from its BNC connector so an external antenna could be plugged in. The serial interface was through a special cable and VERY slow.
[attachment file=”GPS_III_Plus.jpg”]
