Sable Area Snowshoe and Project Update

Since my friends, Gerald and Jill, were up for a few days, I decided to take a couple of hours off to get out for a snowshoe. Jill is still recovering from an injury so she was not able to go with us. Gerald has new snowshoes so he wanted to test them out. We don't see the sun very much this time of year and thankfully the sun was out that day. We parked at the Sable Visitors' Center, snowshoed along the river, headed up into the dunes, and then returned to the car by snowshoeing along side the cross country ski trail.

Gerald putting his new snowshoes on...

Snowshoeing down the trail and along Sable River...

Then across the foot bridge...

And into the dunes...

We were absolutely getting sand blasted as we approached the bluff.  Winds were at least 40 mph.

Back up the Ghost Forest blow out...

As we snowshoed back the cross country ski trail, the sky lit up carnelian.

Work continues on the project.  I decided to make some improvements which took a few days to implement.  Navigation within each adventure will help users to move around between sections so I added a Table of Contents and inserted a TC button on each page.  So no matter which slide you are on, you will be able to get back to the beginning to explore another section.  Since some people may only want to be entertained by just the movies, I also inserted a list of the movies.  On each slide I also have a user input button that participants can press to give me feedback or point out a type or other problem.  Initially I just had a ">" symbol on the button.  The other day I converted the button to do double duty and also give the slide/page number. 

It would be difficult to determine how many different images are included in all the movies and on the individual slides, but I did start to tabulate some of the other components.  The first adventure (The Basics) has four segments, 318 slides, and 53 movies.  I am half way done with segment C of the second adventure and should finish it in the next couple of days.  Segment D is the digitized version of the Gitche Gumee Beach Rock Identification Guide so there will not be much editing of this segment since it already has a table of contents.  So then I will just have the last segment to finish.  I'm not sure how much of the photography I will redo, but I may launch with the photos I've already taken and then redo the photography over the rest of the winter. 

I do have one issue that came to my attention regarding computer compatibility.  I don't own an IPhone or an IPad so I was not aware of the "feud" between Apple and Adobe.  Apparently, when Apple developed these devices, they made the decision to not allow them to play Adobe-based flash videos.  Unfortunately, the software I am using to launch the project is Flash based.  All of the movies I've produced are in a Flash format to make them compatible with the e-learning software.  I've corresponded with the company that developed the e-learning software.  They are aware of this issue and admit to being victimized by the Apple-Adobe feud.  They hope that in the future changes can be made to allow other video formats so that IPad users can access and run the software.  Thankfully, people who have Apple desktop and laptop computers, as well as those with other non-Apple tablets, will be able to access and participate in the online rockhounding adventures.