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.

Log 2014112901

This post was in my drafts and was written prior to this date.

I installed No Signal Alert Pro and Voice Recorder by First75 on my Android smartphone this evening.  While the only place to test this is down trail at this point, I'm feeling confident that the "signal lost" and "signal regained" with me being the voice of the computer will work and give me auditory notifications of such events, especially when I'm looping to, or back on bicycle. Also, I'll be able to turn the smartphone on just before an anticipated area of coverage to make updates to Facebook and family. The new voice recorder app now lets me record in .amr format, which is needed for the computer to pick them up as notification sounds in the directory: mnt\sdcard\sounds and make them available in the No Signal Alert Pro's properties menu.

There's been problems trying to get this to work right.  So far, I tested those sounds and everything seems to work as it should.  Also, the signal lost sound with also be simultaneous with the "red alert" klaxon that I have as a part of my ST: Red Alert, or Star Trek wallpaper.  This and the app are necessary to facilitate my custom signal alerts.

I went shopping at Century Cycles in Peninsula of Summit County today.  That's where I dropped off the 30 year old refurbished road bike that I recently purchased to get a new rear rack and grip tape installed.  I managed to purchase a new 750 lumen head lamp with an internal and rechargeable Lithium ion battery.  At 750, I'm at a loss for words.  I'm not sure that I can properly comprehend how much light that is?  The best thing that I have is only about a 140 lumen hand flash light and I think that thing impressive. To use a religious metaphor, a 750 might open a gateway to God.

Log 2014051201

I drove my car down to the Cuyahoga National Forest today to acquire a free map at Happy Days Camp.  On my way back, I stopped at a local gas station and just before I got out of the car, the emergency sound played on my smartphone Weatherbug Elite app, alerting me that I was in an area declared to be in a tornado warning.  The gas station clerks quickly shut down the station and reluctantly, I had to drive another 3 miles in to the nearby City of Hudson.  I stopped at a local McDonald's to prepare to take shelter.

The point that I want to make is that I was rather impressed with the way that app worked under the circumstances.  My AM/FM head unit wasn't on at the time.  Also, I got emergency text alerts from Verizon Wireless as well.  Weatherbug played the emergency weather sound again when the app changed over to another county.  That's something that the text alerts didn't do, but they probably work on a much wider area, whereas, the app goes from the nearest weather station to the next one based on my GPS position.

They are probably more frequent, but I'm not sure if that makes the text alerts inferior?  Right now, I'm going to reserve judgment on that.  Weatherbug is inferior to the text in the way that I won't get its updates if I don't have any data signal.  But the texts will come in if I have so much as one unstable bar of roaming.  As for today, it's good to see this get a test.  It wasn't even on my list of things to experiment with and I'm glad it happened.

My back sprain continues to become more minor