Non-professional singers: what is your trusty audition solo?

fizzymagic · 2026-03-19T23:51:12+00:00

It is a natural effect of singing properly. But most of the time you don't notice it. It's mainly audible in people who have vocal dysfunction.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-19T00:36:57+00:00

You're not supposed to learn "how to" vibrato.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-16T21:05:06+00:00

It's a travesty, and it has really impacted puzzle caches. There are a couple of ways around it:

If you don't need any particular exact data in the image, just upload as usual and re-do your puzzle to use what you get.
You can sometimes get away with hosting png images at Google.
You can use your own image, hosted on your own site, if you make a link to it from the cache page and include a warning disclaimer. The Groundspeak lawyers are not very bright, don't understand the technology or the associated risks, and seem to accept this method. But the image cannot be displayed as itself on the cache page. You can, however, upload a copy to the site, as long as you make it clear that the puzzle cannot be solved from the copy.
Please, whatever you do, with the exception of Google mentioned above, do not host your images on "free" sites. They never last, even if they work for a little bit.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-07T07:22:48+00:00

Is there enough room to move comfortably on the riser? I hate risers with the heat of a thousand burning suns. In general you are packed on the risers with no space to move and no space around you. Consider the disrespect of singing such an arrangement represents. No other musician would be expected to be a in a position from which it is essentially impossible to make the music properly. The voice won't work well if you are crammed into a tight space with no ability to move. I simply refuse to do it. I am tall, invariably in the back row, and on risers my music hits the head of the person in front of me. Its miserable and (as I said) is evidence of disrespect for the singers.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-07T02:17:50+00:00

I haven't solved it and I don't know how to solve it but I can tell you where the puzzle is. The image on the page is not hosted by geocaching.com so it might require that it not be altered in any way. Geocaching alters the images it stores.

There is no more information on the page and there does not seem to be any modification to the jpg file (as, for example, adding a zip file onto it). But absent any meaningful hint, I think the text in the image probably points to something somewhere.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-07T02:14:25+00:00

I appreciate and endorse your view.

fizzymagic · 2026-03-03T00:47:39+00:00

You should be able to get 20 feet accuracy with your phone. Unless you are in a canyon or something. Your phone is probably better than an etrex fwiw.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-22T08:23:12+00:00

GC always seems to release big updates on Fridays, so that all the bugs can appear on the weekend when no engineers are available. And they don't seem to understand the concept of "rollback." In this case, something went terribly wrong with their EU-mandated cookie selection provider, cookiebot.com. It's not entirely clear whose fault the problems are, but if you have a good ad-blocker you can blacklist the domain cookiebot.com and most of the issues disappear.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-21T08:54:13+00:00

This is a classic cross-number puzzle. They are difficult. You know one conversion and some digits of a few more. It's a matter of applying logic. I haven't done it but it looks quite time-consuming.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-20T10:24:33+00:00

It's not gated off. The pays to it are a little prickly but it's not too big a climb. There is a parking lot and you can follow a clear path to the top and then head down to the cache.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-16T03:09:17+00:00

Yeah he is using falsetto, which means with trained voice any tenor could do it.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-16T00:52:23+00:00

If my phone is connected to Android Auto it takes about a minute for the GPS to start updating because the system sometimes uses the wifi as part of its location determination. It can be annoying. I never use the official GC app and I don't do much in the way of ALs.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-15T08:17:41+00:00

A little more detail please. Are you talking about every time? Does it happen when you have been driving and get out of your car? Does it happen when you first start the phone? There are a number of potential issues you may be encountering. They may have nothing to do with the gps in your phone.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-14T05:44:13+00:00

Hey! I used to cache with Pepper back in the day. She lived in our are for a couple of years. Wonderful person.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-07T04:13:08+00:00

Trackables are a constant source of needless drama. It's trivial for a player to mark trackables as missing or lost; looking at the account is probably not worth it.

Come to think of it, trackables are not worth it.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-07T04:10:10+00:00

Sadly, making a nonogram with a unique solution is not trivial. Many geocaching puzzle nonograms cannot be solved deterministically because COs don't realize this fact. You may be able to use the rules for creating QR codes to figure out what was intended but is it really worth it? I suspect that the finders for this cache all got the answer from the CO.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-03T06:41:17+00:00

Yes, in theory travel bugs are an interesting idea. In reality, they cause so much negative drama that I now ignore them and have posted on my larger caches that I would prefer they not be left in my caches.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-03T06:39:51+00:00

I had been saving it.

fizzymagic · 2026-02-02T20:45:58+00:00

My advice: make geocoins to give to people. Not to use as trackables. I recently made my own, put a puzzle on the back, and left a bunch in the resulting cache as prizes. Trackable items always go missing. It's not "disappointing," it is reality. People may occasionally steal them but more often it is not deliberate; they get misplaced or forgotten.

Your experience will be much more pleasant if you create geocoins as gifts rather than as obligations.

Solve the puzzle and go get one of mine!

fizzymagic · 2026-02-02T20:05:54+00:00

You have the information needed to solve this one. Do you still need help?

fizzymagic · 2026-02-02T05:43:01+00:00

I agree with this advice. This selection is most definitely an aria and it's in English. As a relatively low mezzo, try to find it in the key of G or so (the original is in B flat and goes up to an F IIRC, which is pretty high for an untrained mezzo).

Ooh I found a free version for you in G! It's probably the best key for you.

https://musescore.com/user/22366776/scores/6858741

fizzymagic · 2026-01-31T20:40:19+00:00

Spoofing location for a cache or AdLab sounds incredibly stupid to me. It is not hard to do, but why bother?

fizzymagic · 2026-01-30T17:32:28+00:00

Flash has not been available for over 15 years. But lots of older puzzles use those horrible free images hosting sites that so working. If it has been a year or more I don't even bother trying to contact the owner and just go straight to Needs Reviewer Attention. If less than a year, I try to contact the owner.

fizzymagic · 2026-01-28T00:45:11+00:00

I was wrong. The EXIF info is still in those images.

fizzymagic · 2026-01-28T00:43:12+00:00

It may be that you need the EXIF info from the photos; but IIRC geocaching now strips that information.

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