Friday, June 01, 2012

Southern Alberta Guide Book Climbing App

Well, after a bit of help verifying content and linkages, I'm in the final wind down for the app.  Hopefully I can get it finished this weekend, nearly meeting my June 1 deadline.

Here's what I have left to get things "good enough" to publish to the app store.

  • Write up Yarrow E ridge alpine rock route from Blair's notes
  • Write up Crowsnest Mtn Scramble from my notes, verifying and referencing with other online descriptions. - Not enough time..  I'll leave this for summer and open the door for all the "Waterton-centric" complaints.  Just not enough time to do all the verifications needed...
  • Compile research on Citadel Spires and phone Paul to grab any of his pictures and get a rough grading
  • Compile the research I have on Cleveland's North Face to write up a basic description.
  • Create an alpine ? grade icon
  • Create Thunder Mountain icon
  • add images to yarrow page
  • add images to anderson
  • Add images and photoshop in routes for 7 alpine rock routes & 6 scrambles.  - images left to do.
    • Alderson - will have to wait until summer update
    • Dungarvan
    • Crandell

  • Add a list of FA by author 
  • Add a list of FA by decade - done, but needs app formatting (1hr)
  • Increase the vertical spacing on notes & updates icon for the Notes page
  • Update info for two Bear's Hump projects
  • Update the Bear's Hump Route Image Legend with the new names

  • Create mini-thumbnails for most of the alpine rock & scramble routes  - Mostly done (Crowsnest upload, Cleveland get & upload left)
  • Decide if I really want to explore adding a recessed table look for route rating sections. - no go because I have to change the CSS which the company doesn't easily let you change.  Plus the grey color scheme makes it challenging to design without adding way to many focal points on a single page.  Therefore, no slick look like Mountain Project's recessed round corner windows.
  • Verify if I ever updated the route marking colours for the Reservation Slab.
  • Verify that all crag descriptions have "Getting There" as the first section..... Janson :) ? - Screw that.  While "Getting there would be nice to have at first, is there really a point to Intro info coming at the end of the page.  I think I'm going to switch things back to a normal guidebook layout rather than a "what info will a user refer to most frequently" approach.  I've changed my mind again.  I'll spend the couple of hours to move "Getting There" to the top.  I'll also have to change all the "Introduction" headings to "Overview" headings.
  • Add GPS coordinates for most crags.
    • Gap
    • Crowsnest Pass
    • Drywood
    • Waterton
    • Scrambles - will have to wait until summer update.  
    • Alpine
    • Prairies - I've decided to cut out the bouldering info.  Too much of a distraction

  • Add a red header for "About" page.
  • Write an info page on Alpine Rock Routes
  • See where the heck my Wishbone climbing pictures are (I have some half digitized ones from last month :(
  • Add info for undeveloped areas (copy from old word doc) - I suspect I'll skip this due to time.  I'll throw it in my Aug. update.
  • Create a menu page & info for nearby climbing areas.  - Just doing a link to various guidebooks.  I'll see if I get time tonight to dig up the old notes on unexplored areas.  I'm going to skip the summary of various weekend destinations.  Its just not worth the return for my time.
  • Add a page of links or images for relevant guidebooks.
  • Icon for Cleveland NF.
  • Split Citadel Spire into two routes.
  • Barnaby & Carbondale crag icons & images.




  • Decide if I want to keep "Prairies" area and just include Glenwood Boulder and the couple bits of route info I have, or change it to Bouldering and also include two or three sentences on Frank, the boulder up at Expert's choice, & the boulders behind the warden's compound. - getting rid of bouldering for this edition
  • Buy apple developer license $100-$150 - ordered June 16.  Should be here by June 17.
  • Buy app publishing fee $100 + $10/month - 1-2 days for iPhone and 5-10 for apple.  App should be ready on the apple and android markets June 27 to July 2.
  • Decide if I have the time to do a better logo than the ugly green one I have.  Probably not... - updated.  Would have been nice to do a border and add a bit of a red effect on the hiker.  No time (the ugly green is the old icon.  It didn't match the app colour scheme)
  • Copy old info to a single page for "Undeveloped Areas"
For Summer Update
  • old picture of frank goble
  • interview videos/podcasts
  • better Blakiston photos
  • Gargoyle ridge (better route diagram)
  • Medicine Hat Wall (thunder mountain) routes
  • Knob Hill, Another Day Care area & roadside info
  • Emerald Lake route photos & details.
  • add old guidebook front pages in "about page"
  • update FA grade to show Crag, not year as 4rd column.
  • Add more scrambles
  • Remove pictures from Scrambles and Alpine and put them into a photo album for each route

Hmm.... maybe that is a lot to do.

I do like having the Alpine rock section in there.  That and the scrambling really make this a robust guide.  Of course it opens up a slew of never ending additions....

3 Comments:

At 6/10/2012 02:18:00 PM , Blogger chris goble said...

3 or 4 more small things to do and then final edit! Yeahh. You don't want to know how many hours it took to transcribe and format things for the app & do the updates for this latest edition.

I'm guessing 300h or so..

 
At 6/10/2012 02:20:00 PM , Blogger chris goble said...

The app is sitting at 88meg. Much less than I feared with all the images I included. I couldn't get any more useful res out of images that went beyond 1600px. I suppose the new iPhones would, but the really high res images seemed to cause loading issues on older mobiles.

 
At 5/27/2013 03:23:00 AM , Anonymous Waterton alberta accommodation said...

Thanks a lot for sharing this useful information.Thanks for all the useful information I found on your site.

Waterton lakes hotel

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home

Email me