Decided to add a future plans area to publicize potential future directions for this project and see if anyone out there finds them interesting.

Someone (thanks Catherine!) found a bug in the Contact area that was giving people an error message even though messages were being sent fine. I've taken out a similar bug on the Snowdune background page.

First major change of 2004. I've added a RSS 1.0 feed for visitors using aggregation tools such as Feedreader. A basic RSS 2.0 feed is also available.

Back in October I enabled Snowdune to receive GPS coordinate updates via email. I've finally got round to enabling this via SMS message from the mobile phone. The SMS message goes to SMS2Email which forwards it on. This facility should enable more regular coordinate updates.

Snowdune (thankfully) hasn't yet suffered from comment spamming but, having suffered from it on one of my other blogs, I decided to install Jay Allen's MT Blacklist plugin just in case.

Added a new Wallpaper area to the site for high resolution versions of any suitable photos that we take. Obviously, uploading them will depend on the availability of some suitable bandwidth!

I've added a facility that enables GPS coordinates to be emailed into Snowdune and it will automatically update the "Most Recent Grid" and "Mapping" areas. All I need to do now is to set up a suitable SMS to email gateway, and I will make it even easier to update the journey map from a mobile phone.

Worldkit was a breeze to integrate into Snowdune's mapping area. I simply had to create an RSS feed from the grid coordinate archive, tweak the config and visuals a bit and it's up and running. I was so impressed I simply had to Paypal over a donation to the author!

I've been looking for a tool that would enable the Snowdune grids area to automatically map our progress. I hope I've finally found it in the shape of worldKit. I've downloaded it and hope to integrate it soon.

Until now I have disabled the EXIF data viewing capabilities of Gallery. Since the EOS 10D captures loads of useful info, I've switched this capability on. The photos that don't produce capture info were captured with the old Canon IX7 and then scanned in.

EXIF data can be viewed by selecting the photo and clicking on the [Photo Properties] link to the top right of the photo.

Decided to try doing a full Gallery upgrade in readiness for implementing a photo rating system. Went fine and it didn't take too long to re-apply some of the Snowdune specific tweaks.

Built-in tweaked versions of the Gallery top albums and latest updated album hacks - these are available here

Snowdune's development has taken a while and I've learnt a lot about the tools along the way. Most of the pointers came from web articles written by people encountering similar problems. I thought I should add a section to post some of my own discoveries and tips.

Lynn has written the first of probably many articles in the new Gear section. No prizes for guessing who will be writing the packing list.

After investigating several newsletter scripts I settled on MyMail by CodingClick as it seems to offer all the functionality I need without being too cumbersome.

Sorted out a bug that was preventing from the "Remember me" cookie from being read by all the comments pages across the site.

Built a new "Gear" section for the site that will act as a repository for our travel kit and packing ideas. Once there is some base content in there I will add it into the main site nav.

Standardised site nav with more links for all article listings that use excerpts. Also updated all the archive page layouts to use the new style-sheet positioning.

Hacked the Gallery code around a little so that it sends an email notification when someone posts a comment in the gallery.

Using Brad Choate's excellent Regex plugin Snowdune's search results page will look a little more interesting with appropriate images pulled out depending on the area of the site.

Finally wrote the first journal entry for Snowdune recounting our experiences at The Datai last autumn. There's plenty of work to go and some rough edges to sort out but I feel happy enough to allow people to browse the site now.

Installed Gavin Estey's MTWeather plugin. I had to hack the initial code a bit to work with our version of Perl but it seems to be working so I will design a couple of "Weather back at base" sidebar features for the About area of the site.

Tried viewing the site at resolutions lower than the 1280×1024 that I normally work at and was very unhappy with the way some the layouts looked. Adjusted them substantially so that the rescaling looks better balanced at low resolutions. 800×600 doesn't look too good but I don't want to compromise the higher res layouts further. Maybe I will implement different versions for different resolutions in the future?

Installed Brad Choate's excellent MTMacro plugin today. First macros I've set up are ones to automatically create the HTML for photos and quotes included in the body of Journal articles. Works like a dream - nice one Brad!

It wouldn't be nice to lose a load of uploaded photography so I have added a comprehensive automatic backup system to the site. Deathly dull. Added a bookmark icon for newer browsers and ironed out some sidebar features bugs that were kicking around.

For the last few days I've been striving to get an email to entry system to work. Some attempts have been more successful than others. I've decided to give up (for now) and wait until the Movable Type team release a version that properly supports this.

The battle of attrition that I am having to try and get email creation of blog entries continues. My latest attempt using a Python script seems to have fallen flat on its face. Anyway, I have mailed by helpful host and we'll see if they can set some light on the issue...

The site structure is nearly there so it's time to start putting in some initial content and make the site ready for launch.

Another somewhat unproductive night - added author fields to articles and did a load more research into moblog capabilities. Doesn't look like this is going to be easy to integrate with the Movable Type system. I know it can be done, just need to find out how...

The aim of the Grids feature is to provide regularly updated GPS location information, hopefully by the most globally accessible channels. I added an archive feature today that will show monthly summaries of these grid updates.

Spent ages working with David Rayne's email to entry plugin but after much investigation and fiddling around with Perl modules I haven't managed to get it to work. Got in touch with David and he's going to send me over a debug version. I'll rejoin the battle another day.

Added a feature that shows a random travel-related quotation on certain pages.

Added a feature that will automatically generate links to Amazon(UK) ordering for any book reviews that include the book's ISBN number. Sorted out some other minor bugs with the reading archives.

Made this very log of the design and development process part of the "About" area of the site.

Added a "Snowdune Tech" page that describes the photograhic and software technology used to build and run Snowdune. Main purpose is to give credit where credit is due to the excellent open source software that Snowdune relies on.

Created an "About" page to provide background on the Snowdune. The body content is manageable from within Movable Type. Included a sidebar that provides highlights from a forthcoming "Snowdune Tech" page.

Tried various Movable Type plugins to enable remote creation of entries using email submissions. Can't get any of them to work and have emailed my host's support. Sounds like they may be able to do something for me at the start of next week.

Reading articles and archive templates completed. Reworked way sidebar features are built - decided to go for PHP includes rather than MTOtherBlog as it allows more flexible inclusion on the archive pages.

Reporter article presentation and archives implemented.

Cracked getting the sidebar features section to localise to a category or month archive page. Had to use some smart PHP includes to pull in archived features sidebars. Reading and local news will now be displayed if an entry was created for the corresponding country or month. Also used the FirstNWords plugin to reduce the excerpt length for the Reading feature while keeping the Reporter section excerpts longer.

Created a monthly archive for travel journal entries. I want the features sidebar to show elements that are suitable for the context of the particular archive page that is being shown. Haven't found a neat way of doing this yet... will resume work on this tomorrow.

Created a destinations archive that lists all the journal entries for the most recently visited country, together with links to archive pages for each other country visited. Had to use quite a few MT plugins to get the desired results - see the Tech section for more info.

Designed and implemented the page format for displaying an individual Journal article, including a visitor commenting facility. The sidebar features probably need a bit more work so that they localise to the article being shown but I need to work out the neatest way of doing this.

Did a load of work today integrating the Gallery software into the main look of the site. Some of it was quite painful but I am pleased with the results and the Gallery software is certainly a very capable.

After much fiddling around with the random block add-on to Gallery I have got a random photo picker for the homepage, plus one that plucks out a random wildlife photo for the Fauna & Flora sidebar feature.

I have converted the graphical home page design into HTML. Next stage is to replace the placeholder text and graphics with links into the Movable Type and Gallery systems.

Having completed the design a couple of days ago I've been converting it to an HTML layout, ready for the final transformation to MovableType and PHP code. I am hopeful that I'll have a basic site operational in a couple of weeks....

Found some links to some useful Movable Type plugins and I've installed them - notably at Bradchoate's site. They should enable richer, better formatted posts.

Decided that look to date was overcomplicated and detracted too much from the important imagery and text. Did a radical rework with a new pallette. Much happier with the new look. Much cleaner and portable to inner pages within the site. Just need to sort out the inter-destination navigation...

Last couple of days have been devoted to designing the overall site and key features. I'm still not entirely happy, particularly with the colour scheme but I'm going to leave it for now and let it stew around a bit in the old brain cells....

Installed AWStats without a hitch to provide better site statistics. Most of the building blocks for tech infrastructure of snowdune are now in place. Just need to investigate whether I can set up some kind of automatic backup mechanism.

Now we're cooking... after much hunting around finally figured out how to get Movable Type to talk to NetPBM to do auto-thumbnailing of uploaded images. This will be invaluable when posting images remotely from around the world. Put a holding page up targetting Spring 2003 for an external launch. Better get busy!

After much grief, finally managed to get Gallery component of snowdune installed and running happily. Looks like it should be pretty easy to adapt it to the design vision that I have for snowdune. Did some initial logo and design work.

Domain registry and hosting sorted. Time to define the vision and start work on implementing the software components that will be needed to deliver Snowdune. Holding page up for a Spring 2003 launch.....