Log 2015012901

Yesterday, I posted two videos on the Whipple Section - Buckeye Trail on-road that took place between the unincorporated areas of Whipple and Warner in Washington County.  I also resumed work on the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource - Continuous Short Hikes.  The American Discovery Trail's east independent arm is short by a camping/ lodging amenity in NW Washington County, Ohio to continue on into Morgan County and possibly be hikable at less than 12.5 mile route or less all the way to Scioto Trail Section (, Pt. 21 in the Waverly area of Pike County.

Right now, I'm waiting on data from the Buckeye Trail Association concerning a possible re-route of the New Straitsville Section.  I think I can route the shorter hikes per day from it's Point 14 in Trimble Township of Athens County.  Given the heavy off-road nature of South Central Ohio, I might be able to route them past the Waverly area and go further south to Peebles, maybe even as deep as Nile Township of Scioto County near Portsmouth.  But I lost my New Straitsville Section map and I don't know how that happened.  I usually keep a good accountability of my Buckeye Trail maps.  It's probably for the better.  I'm overdue on taking an inventory of them anyways and checking them for new map editions and updates.  With a 195 miles left for me to hike, I know that what that what I need to do that is good.

I set up a new service yesterday from VisualPing.  It's set to monitor trail alert and map update web pages on the Buckeye, North Country and American Discovery Trails websites.  When one of the set pages is modified, it's designed to send me an email.  Once I get them, I'll designate their senders or subjects to automatically filter to a special folder and forward a copy to my smartphone's email address, which will convert as much as it can to a SMS text message.  Since the text will only be 160 characters, the full contents will be cut off.  But I'm on counting on the notification alone to prompt me to look up the alerted web page.  Since the SMS text message is the best way to reach me in the most remote areas, when I loose data signal, I can just hike back into range, or stop by a local library and check it on a computer.  But in the unlikely event that I'll incur a trail alert, or a map update on the section that I'm on, or the one after, I'll have the most immediate notification possible.

Prior to social media, an Internet protocol known as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was popular.  It was code that was written into the website and when it had a feed, the end users Internet browser would have an icon that would light up orange.  By clicking on it, the end user would subscribe to that feed and the icon would become orange again when ever an update was detected.  But the way I see it, not all web masters know how to write in RSS and due to social media, I believe that it's becoming obsolete.  I'm hoping that VisualPing will circumvent that.