[at-l] FW: Thru-Hike Memories - Publishing on the Internet (Part 3) - lo ng

[AT-L <AT-L@fallingwater.com>]

Preparing for the Web

Up until now the possibility for most of us, of having our writings read
by more than a hand few of people has been next to impossible. Face it
we don't write well enough or are too timid to go through the struggle
of trying to get something published. Rejection isn't something most of
us take well.

The simplicity and low cost of publishing on the Internet makes it
possible for all of us to be our own publishers. Anyone who's willing to
fork over the $20 per month to establish an Internet account can have a
forum to the world. And I do mean the literal world.  One doesn't begin
realize the extent of the net until they see people coming in from the
far reaches of the globe ( China, Chile, Israel, Russia, and many many
others) to read their journals.

What Kind of Site Do You Want?

If you're getting ready to start your hike, now's a good time to decide
what kind of website to develop. Are you going to attempt a day to day
journal and have someone transcribe it as you go along or are you going
to do it self-contained and manage your own web site on the run. Are you
going to take daily notes then wait until you get home to flesh them out
into a journal. Will you're web be a daily journal, maybe a narrative
divided into chapters, just random thoughts of your experience or a
photo essay?  

Answers to these questions will dictate not only the kind of notes
you'll take on a daily basis, but how much work you're getting yourself
into. 

First a Little History

The nature of trail journals on Internet has changed over the last few
years. The first journals were either from people that had hiked the
trail before and were posting their journals, or quick messages and
notes from people on the trail to someone at home. These were then
posted to mailing list and later collected into some journal form. 

Our journals (Appalachian Journals <http://www.fallingwater.com/at77>  )
would be an example of the former since they were compiled 18 years
after our hike. The journal of  Gail B. "Gutsy" Johnson's
<http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/3524/gutsy.htm>  '96 thru-hike
originally started out as emails to the AT-L. Later were compiled
together and reformatted for the web.

The first attempt to try and wrap it up all together in a self contained
unit was by Waldo Jaquith <http://www.comet.net/apptrail/journal.htm>
on his thru-hike in '96. Unfortunately equipment and medical problems -
in part caused by carrying the too heavy computer equipment - cause him
to abandon the hike before completion.

The first thru-hiker to complete the trail and maintain his web site
unassisted was Matthew Olsen "Webhiker" <http://www.webhiker.com/>  who
finished it last summer. Still by the time he finished the trail, he had
abandoned posting daily journal entries. He did download a picture from
his digital camera to the web up until the end.

Those who have had someone at home to help maintain their sites have
done better in maintaining them until the end. If for no other reason
that because they had a few less things to worry about. 

In '97 Wingfoot offered budding journalist a home for their journals on
Trailplace. This was eagerly accepted by many because it eliminated the
need to build a web site of their own, then try to persuade or cajole
some friend or family member to maintain it during the five months they
were of hiking. He provided the site, did the coding and even arranged
the volunteers to transcribe the incoming journals. Even with all that,
only a few of people that finished the trail were still writing new
entries to their journal. Most had either quit the trail never to seen
or heard from again. Those that finished the trail but abandoned their
journals simply got tired of the daily grind of writing. One who was
maintaining two journals (a public and a private one) quit writing the
public version because it was so much work.

Wingfoot did this again in '98 with a new format. Designed primarily to
make it easier for the transcribers to get the journals updated.
Unfortunately it also made it harder to track the progress all of the
journalist. Eventually I could only keep track of a few people.
Generally those who started out early in the season and were at the top
of the list. 

Understanding the Nature of the Journal

The failure to complete a journal by many who try, even by those who
successfully completed the thru-hike, points out the difficulty
maintaining an ongoing journal. The major difficulty lies in the
different worlds the thru-hiker must negotiate during the hike. Prior to
starting our hike, we are heavily involved with our friend and family.
Now days, thanks to the Internet, we are able to broaden our circle to
include our trail family on the different mailing list. 

In the days that proceed the hike, we look for methods to include those
at home in our venture. The Internet seems to make the perfect vehicle
for achieving that goal. It relatively easy, is available anywhere and
allows us to communicate with hundreds of people with a few strokes of
the keyboard.

Yet when we get on the trail, we enter an entirely new world. One with
an amazing array of sights, sound, experiences and people. Once on the
trial, many journalists find themselves torn between the two world. Each
world is trying to compete for your attention. Some journalist arrive in
town only to find boxes with food, mail or email from unknown people who
chance on their site and want to reach out and help. Sort of global
trail angles. So now the journalist must add time to compressed
schedules to respond to this influx of stuff. Thereby taking them away
from interactions with trail companions. 

Prior to the Internet, journals were written to record our thoughts and
feelings during some momentous occasion. Occasionally after reflection
and rewriting they were passed along to help others that follow prepare
for their own venture. With the Internet it is often only days - in some
cases minutes - between writing the journal and publishing to the world.
This short circuits the process of reflection and rewrite.  Online
journals have become a vehicle to pull two different worlds together.
But sometimes the process more resembles a train wreck more than the
graceful on ramp to the information highway.

Has pressure of an online caused anyone to abandon their hike or
journal? Well not to my knowledge. However, it does alter the nature of
the hike. So if you're going to undertake the process of posting an
online journal, understand that it will change your hike. By the same
token for those at home. Give the journalist some space. Allow them the
opportunity to absorb the entirety of the trail experience.

The Web and You

Fortunately these days creating a web site couldn't be easier. If you
can use a word processor, you can create a web site. Most of today's
word processors have the ability to output HTML code. Allowing you to
easily create the pages, save them in html format then copy them up to
the web site.

There are a few more things to consider before sitting down at the
computer and composing that award winning site. There is also a wide
range of tools available to aid in the development of web sites. No
single tool will do all things. Or at least it won't do all things well.
Your general purpose tool box will include word processors, html
editors, text editors, image editors and file transfer protocol (ftp)
tools.

As important in consideration of your personal editing tools, it the
selection of the Internet Software Provider (ISP) you'll use to host
your site. Each of these sites have servers that have software that
delivers your site to the world. The type of software running on these
servers can have a big effect on what can do or how you build your site.

Tools of the Trade

Dealing with Text

For me the two basic tools of creating a web site are a good word
processor and good html editor. While word processors can be used to
create web pages on their own. Generally the output is not as clean an
html editor. The strength of modern word processors is in the creation
of text. With built in auto spell and syntax checkers, thesaurus, etc.
they make it possible for us to sound reasonably intelligent. Personally
I use Microsoft Word for writing. Once I'm happy with the text, I'll
copy it over to an html editor. 

Another advantage of the separate word processor step is ease of
creating documents that can be printed for distribution to family
members without internet access.

Html editors look much like word processors today. Gone is the
requirement to understand the nuances of html coding - however it is a
good idea to have a basic understanding of html tags. These are WYSIWYG
editors that allow you to drag and drop text and tables around the
screen. There are many of them available - many free ones are available
for downloading on the internet. A number of the higher end versions
have advanced editing tools (spell checkers, etc), however since these
editors strength is in formatting html, I'd still recommend a separate
word processor step.

Many of the higher end html editors have built in web site management
tools. These tools are designed to manage the web site. They do
everything from helping to organize the location of the different files,
to checking for bad links, to allowing you to move files around within
the web site and automatically repair any broken links. 

Creating the navigation for your typical journal is not that difficult.
At the most you'll have a single directory - with maybe a separate
directory for images - and a large number of files. Maintaining the
consistency of look and feel to all of the pages can be difficult.
Especially if you create a hundred or more pages - assuming one page per
day - then decide you want to create a new look. Now you'll have to go
back and edit each page. Many of the advanced html editors provide tools
for automatically tracking navigation when pages are added. In addition
you can use one of the predefined themes - or if you choose to be
different, create your own theme - that control the look and feel of
your site. By changing the theme you automatically change the look and
feel of all pages.

It is typically the use of these tools where you have to be aware of
what software is running on the isp's servers. Most of them include plug
in extensions to enhance your web page. These extension's include hit
counters, automatic discussion tracking, limited form processing, etc.
However, any extension that requires processing by the server, must be
supported by the server. 

For example. Something as simple as a hit counter - a counter that's
generally located on the main page indicating how many times the page
has been accessed - requires that a software program be run on the
server. Each time the page is accessed, a little program is run on the
server to increment the counter and store it on the web site.  If your
isp doesn't support the extensions (more later) then there's no reason
to place it on your page.

These tools start in the $80 range at the low end - or free on the
internet - up to hundreds of dollars for the high end programs. For most
of my own html editing, I use Microsoft Front Page '98. At about $150 it
provides most of the features I need for managing a half dozen different
sites. While it does have all the built in navigation and theme support.
I don't use them. I prefer to have total control over the site.
Automatic editors always tend to obscure things. This can be beneficial
if you're a novice, however they can make it difficult to add your own
custom extensions.

The last text tool I'd recommend is a good ascii text editor. Notepad
for Windows will work, but it has limited features. If you're doing lots
of cleanup or changes it's nice to have a straight text editor. All html
programs have rules they use for formatting text. Sometimes you want to
do things to overwrite those rules. To do so you need to bring up the
page in a separate text editor. However, if you chose to do this, you'll
need to know a fair amount of html code. Making and error here could
complete destroy the look of your page. You can still fix it, but it may
take sometime.

Those Perfect Web Photos
 
Adding photos to the web starts with converting your photo's to digital
images. If you've used a digital camera to capture your images, you can
skip to the next step. Most of us still use film for recording images in
the field. There are many ways to do this step starting with the initial
film processing. 

Many film processors today provide the option to deliver both the
pictures and digital images at the same time. This service will cost
some additional amount per picture. While on the surface this seems and
attractive option, we will see later that this may not be as beneficial
as it first appears.

The other options available to converting your images are purchasing a
scanner (between $90 to several hundred dollars) or having them
converted professionally. 

Most professionals convert their photos to Kodak PhotoCD before
processing them digitally
(http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/products/photoCD.shtml
<http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/products/photoCD.shtml>  ). The
PhotoCD will hold up to 100 35mm photos. These photos maybe either
slides or photo negatives. Each photo is scanned at 5 different
resolutions ranging from 128x192 up to 4096x6144. Cost per image scanned
ranges from .50 to $4.00. The differences in price depend upon the type
or size of negative used to wither color correction is applied to each
photo individually. All of the other commercial scans I've seen are
returned at a single resolution. Having multiple resolutions to makes
dealing with images easier.

Once you've got the digital images, you need a good image editor. There
are many of them available. They range in price for low cost (shareware)
up to the cream of the crop Adobe Photoshop at $700. A whole crop of low
cost editors has sprung up in the last few years. They are designed for
the first time user and have many tools to automate the different task.
Unfortunately once you get past the basics they are difficult to use.
One shareware product I've used for years is Paint Shop Pro. It can be
downloaded over the web. It has many advanced features is easy to learn
and use. I've used it on a number of professional projects to work on
images. 

The really high end programs like Adobe Photoshop are great if you have
6 months to learn them. And I do mean alot of time. They are great
programs, however they are not for the weak at heart. 

A mid range of programs is appearing that gives you good tools, won't
bankrupt you and require a Ph.D. to run them. The one I've settled on so
far is Microsoft Image Composer. It comes free with Front Page and
provides a lot of features. It is specifically designed for creating
images for the web. It also includes a GIF animator for creating those
animated GIF files. Still it does require some time to get to know the
program. It will not be included in Front Page 2000. Instead it has been
broken out into a new program PhotoDraw with a new interface. There are
a number of new features, however I don't know what the cost will be.

Expect to pay between $100 and $200 for a reasonable image editor.

Using an Image Editor

Despite the fact that we are visually oriented, most people find editing
images more difficult than dealing with text. For one there is an
entirely new language to master. For another, many operations aren't
intuitive. 

Unless you've got lots of time, most of the work done on images will be
in cropping the image, performing some color correction and doing some
formatting, then converting the image for the web. 

Cropping Images

I'd love to say I was a good photographer. Like most hikers, my photos
collection is filled with countless photos taken from tops of mountains.
They are composed of large amounts of blue sky and endless rolling
hills. You could place one taken in New England next to one taken in
North Carolina and not distinguish much difference. On top of that many
photos are taken on the fly. Stop, whip out the camera, snap the photo,
and keep hiking. Sound familiar? Well that type of photography doesn't
lend itself to photos were everything is arranged well. 

Enter the cropping tool. On a typical photo - at least mine - 60 percent
of the photo is junk. By cutting away the junk I can often salvage a bad
photo into something a bit interesting. Sometimes, however, the area of
interest is even smaller. This is where having photos scanned in at
different resolutions helps. Cropping a photo scanned in at 640 x 480
may not leave enough left to be displayed. However, that same image
scanned in at 1280x1024 can provide the detail needed to have something
of interest to display. 

If the source of your digital image is fixed to one resolution, you need
to rescan at a higher resolution. Easy to do if you've got the equipment
or your images are on a PhotoCD. If not you'll probably drop the image.

Color Correction

Sometimes when we get our digital images back they look too dark to be
useful. I almost cried when I got back my PhotoCD because most of the
images were so dark I didn't think they'd be useful. So I left the CD in
the draw for months wandering what I'd do. While they sat their patently
waiting to be used, I'd experiment with different image editors trying
to figure out how to make images do what I wanted them to.

Finally I got the right software and was able to retrieve the CD and get
to work process the images. I was able to recover many of the too dark
images and place them up onto our site. Often there is far more
information in the image than our eyes can distinguish. Proper
manipulation of the image can bring out the hidden details. The process
is far too completed to cover in this short paper. However, a careful
reading of your software manual should clarify the process.

Formatting Images

Typical of many web sites is to display a small thumbnail of an image
with the link to the full size version. The worst example of this is the
site that displays the thumbnail while downloading the full size image.
Then you wait an eternity for the image to download. The full size image
displays quickly - because it's the same image displayed at full size -
but generally it wasn't worth the effort. 

In general, I no longer click on the thumbnail pictures anymore. I
waited far too long for images that weren't worth the wait. A better
solution is to edit the image down to the interesting parts and display
it on screen. Forget the thumbnails and the multiple images. It's better
to show less image if it's interesting.

What size of the image should be displayed? In general I don't have a
fixed display size. I pay attention more to the image file size than the
image display size. Two images of the same display size will have
different file size depending upon the content of the image and the type
of compression used. I try to keep images in the 10k to 15k file sizes.
Images much larger than that can slow the page download too much.

In our '77 journals I've got some 70 plus images. The largest is 15K
with the vast majority coming in at 5 to 10k ranges.
Keeping the image size down eliminates the need to manage multiple
copies of the same image.

Saving Images for the Web

It probably doesn't need to be stated, but I'll state it anyway. The
best format for images displayed on the web is jpeg. It provides the
best combination of quality and compression. It does allow you control
over the level of compression. The higher the compression the greater
the loss of detail. In general I'm looking for the least amount of
detail loss. If it's a choice of detail loss or a smaller image, I'll go
for the smaller image. Why? Because the lose in detail, comes through as
a picture that is less clear or with color shifts. I'd rather have a
small clear picture than a large fuzzy one.

Occasionally you'll still see people putting pictures up in gif format.
Generally it's done when you want to have a transparent background.
However the practice should be use sparely. Gif images are just too
large and the colors are often poor good. 

As to animated gifs, unless done well, I find them too distracting. I've
been to a number of backpacking sites that are literally covered with
animated gifs running all over the place. All of which are doing their
dead level best at keeping me from getting to the information I'm
interested in. They are certainly no substitute for a poorly organized
site.

Saving Web Long Term

Before leaving the topic of digital images, I thought I'd cover long
term storage of your images. Unfortunately in today's fast pace of
computer change, there are no good long term solutions. I'm referring to
time spans of 20, 30 or 40 years as long term. With both of our hikes we
have self published printed books of the journals. I know that in 50
years -barring fires, etc. - that they'll be around.

The slide and pictures we have taken will also be around, assuming
proper storage. The digital formats however are another issue. Right now
the best method would be storage on CD ROM. That technology will soon be
replaced by DVD. However they will continue to read CD for the
foreseeable future. It maybe the ten years from now I'll need to
transfer my files to a new format.

The electronic media is one thing. The file formats are another. My text
files are stored in both Microsoft Word and HTML formats. I don't bother
saving a pure ascii version because it's simple to remove the html tags
if needed. As to storing bitmaps, for long term I use .bmp format. 

I realize that .jpg is the default format for lots of programs. However,
unless expressly configured, jpg files don't store a true copy of the
image. As a result each time you save to .jpg format, you loose some of
the original image. Granted if you store them on CD they are not going
to further degrade. They probably have been degraded from the original
image when they were first stored.

Also .bmp format is as close to ascii format for images as it gets. It's
a simple file format that's easy to write code to read. Reading jpg
source files is an exercise in frustration. All of the other formats
have their problems also.

All said there are still no guarantees that my grandchildren could read
the digital versions of our journals. 


Part 4 -
Selecting an ISP, Advance HTML (Guest books, searches), etc. 

Ron "Fallingwater"
Ronm@fallingwater.com <mailto:Ronm@fallingwater.com> 



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