Field Notes Date

[+FluteFace]

I'm really loving my Colorado, and just got to use the new Field Notes feature.

 

I'd like to suggest that the contents of the Field Notes date field be carried into the date field on the "Post a new log" page when I "post a log". Granted, if I'm posting several logs on some other day than today, it only affects the first log, but I habitually forget anyway, and have to go back and fix that first log. I'd love to be saved at the very beginning of a logging session!

 

Some have mentioned having the time on the Field Notes and I have no preference about that one way or the other. I'm just happy that the cache finds are in order.

[Alan White]

I agree, and suggested it here.

[+g-o-cashers]

I agree, and suggested it here.

 

I noticed this today as well. Logged a bunch of caches on the Colorado yesterday (3/2) and uploaded them as fieldnotes with a 3/2 date.

 

Today when I went to log them the date set in the log entry was today (3/3) not the date in the field note.

 

GO$Rs

[+g-o-cashers]

I agree, and suggested it here.

 

I noticed this today as well. Logged a bunch of caches on the Colorado yesterday (3/2) and uploaded them as fieldnotes with a 3/2 date.

 

Today when I went to log them the date set in the log entry was today (3/3) not the date in the field note.

 

GO$Rs

 

There seems to be another date/time related bug with field notes.

 

I uploaded a field note with the following information around 9:30am ET today (3/6):

 

GC19THA,2008-03-06T11:32Z,Found it,""

 

This is the correct Zulu time (I found it at 6:30am ET). But when I uploaded the fields notes the date was 3/5 not 3/6. I thought it might be a conversion to PST that was causing the issue but it still should have been 3:30am there on 3/6, so I'm not sure where 3/5 came from.

 

GO$Rs

[+g-o-cashers]

I received this helpful note from a user (wsgaskins) on the Colorado wiki which is consistent with my observations:

 

With a recent geocache run and field notes from the Colorado, I determined that the timestamps are being interpreted for the 'log date' as Zulu - 12 hours. This is the timezone called "International Date Line West". The geocaching.com Field Notes upload page really needs to have a timezone choice/pulldown menu before it interprets the uploaded file.

 

* I was caching in the Eastern time zone (on Daylight savings, so "EDT")

* Our first find was : at 5:44am Eastern Daylight Time (Zulu - 4 hours)

* geocache_visits.txt: GCP87H,2008-03-17T09:44Z,Found it,""

* And that one is being listed on the Field Notes page as 3/16 log date.

* But note that 09:44Z == 5:44am EDT == 2:44am PDT -- all 3/17 dates.

* Later, we found a cache which is timestamped 12:06Z == 8:06 EDT, and that is the first cache that, when uploaded to GC.com field notes, shows a 3/17 log date. This means that the GC servers are expecting that all the logs occurred in the middle of the Pacific ocean at the international date line (west) when 2008-03-17T12:06Z == 2008-03-17T00:06 (international dateline time...)

[+g-o-cashers]

It seems like the original issue described in this thread has been fixed. Can anyone at Groundspeak confirm this?

 

I logged several caches on my Colorado on 3/22, uploaded the field notes file and logged them today. The log date was auto-populated to 3/22 as I would have expected.

 

I believe the other issue related to timezones still exists but I only see it for caches I log in the morning and this weekend I was only logging afternoon caches.

 

GO$Rs

[+g-o-cashers]

Based on some testing I've done, here's a consolidated list of issues with the field note support. The easiest way to reproduce these is to create a fieldnote file with 24 lines, one for each hour of the same day.

 

Any word on when we might get some fixes for these?

 

- Conversion from field note Zulu time to the user's configured timezone on the site is broken. Timezone on the site was set to EDT and daylight savings was in affect which would make the difference between user time and Zulu time -4 hours. However, the difference between Zulu time in the field notes and the time used on the site was -12 hours. All field notes uploaded with Zulu time before 12:00 (noon) were dated the previous day, only field notes with Zulu time before 04:00 should have been dated the previous day.

 

- When field notes are uploaded the site calculates an "ignore logs before" timestamp which should be based on the timestamp of the last field note in the file. With the timezone on the site set to ET and daylight savings in effect (GMT-4) the "ignore logs before" timestamp that is displayed is off by -13 hours (it is 13 hours too early).

 

- When field notes are upload the site can use the "ignore logs before" timestamp which should prevent field notes on or before that time from being uploaded. With the timezone on the site set to ET and daylight savings in effect (GMT-4) if you upload the same file twice no field notes should be uploaded on the second attempt. Running this test with these settings you will see that all field notes within 5 hours of the last fieldnote in the file are uploaded a second time.

 

- Clear all field notes has the effect of removing the "ignore logs before" timestamp for the user account. If you clear all user notes and reload the geocache_visits.txt file, all field notes will be reloaded again.

 

- If you are creating logs from fieldnotes and change the date of a log entry to different day the next fieldnote entered as a log will use that day instead of the date in the fieldnote. When a log is created from a fieldnote it should always take the date from the fieldnote instead of the date used by the previous log.

 

GO$Rs

[+bamageek]

Is there any updates to this Field Notes issue? I'm still experiencing the date problem that was described earlier. I just uploaded my field notes from the weekend. I had some finds on both 5/3 and 5/4 but they all showed up as being 5/3. These are the entries in my geocache_visits file:

 

GC19H4T,2008-05-03T12:39Z,Found it,""

GC18GF9,2008-05-03T14:27Z,Found it,""

GC1BAJH,2008-05-04T11:43Z,Found it,""

GC1A2G1,2008-05-04T11:53Z,Didn't find it,""

GC1BBE6,2008-05-04T12:01Z,Found it,""

GC14V4C,2008-05-04T12:52Z,Found it,""

 

All of the above entries showed up as being found on 5/3.

 

Its also interesting to note that the "last upload" date gets set to the following:

 

5/3/2008 5:52:00 PM

 

If I try to upload my field notes again, the 5/4 entries will get uploaded every time.

Edited May 5, 2008 by bamageek