<p>There is a lot you can do without installing any software on your own machine. Anything with a web browser is an 'Expo Basic laptop'.
Using the browser, you can logon to the Expo online system ("the website", also known as "troggle") as user 'expo' at <ahref="/accounts/login/">the Troggle User Login page</a>. (Ask another expoer for the 'cavey:beery' password.) You can:
<p>And using email to send the results to an expo nerd, you can:
<ul>
<li>Type up your logbook entry for any trip you do (surface or underground), but please use <ahref="../logbooks.html">our standard format</a>
<li>Upload GPS tracks from your phone
<li>Send photos of cave entrances and cavers doing mad things
<li>Sketch rigging plans on paper, photograph them, and email them
<li>Regularly take photos of pages of '<ahref="../bierbook.html">the bier book</a>' and 'the sesh book' and email them, to protect against accidental 'Gössering'
<li>Regularly take photos of pages of '<ahref="../logbooks.html">the handwritten expo logbook</a>', also to protect against accidental 'Gössering' but also against permanent loss. We are missing several vital logbooks from past expos through carelessness.
</ul>
<p>and of course using your phone or laptop you can update entries on expo antics on public forums such as ukcaving.
<p>If you also have Survex and Therion installed on the laptop (which makes it an "Expo Survey Laptop"), you can do nearly everything for initial cave survey data entry. See the <ahref="surveylaptop.html">expo survey laptop</a> installation instructions.
<p>If you are new to expo and can't do what you want with just a browser and email, then please use the <em>expo laptop</em> in the potato hut first. You don't <em>need</em> to use your own laptop - which can take a while to configure with survex, tunnel and therion.
<p>You may also need to install image editing software such as Irfanview or gimp.
<p>The <em>expo laptop</em> is a bulk update laptop configuration. It has everything for editing and testing survey files (survex, aven, cavern), drawings (tunnel, therion), scanned images of sketches and centre-lines, and photographs. The <em>expo laptop</em> in the potato hut is also physically connected to a flatbed scanner but you can use your phone camera instead and email the images to yourself on your laptop.
<p>The <em>expo laptop</em> may also have some software for managing vector images (such as rigging guides), <ahref="https://paperless.bheeb.ch/">PocketTopo</a> files, <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system">GIS digital maps</a> and <ahref="https://activityworkshop.net/software/gpsprune/development.html">GPS tracks</a>. See the <ahref="surveylaptop.html">full survey laptop configuration</a> for details.
<p>Managing large sets of photographs and scanned images, and managing several folders of these on your laptop and on <var>expofiles</var> on the server is finicky and time-consuming. Many programmers use rsync to help them with this, but if you have never used rsync, now is <em>not</em> the time to learn. Use filezilla on the expo laptop. It is at this point that if you are using a Windows machine, you <em>really</em> need to <ahref="winlaptop.html#problems">read about how expo uses hard and soft links and filenames on Windows</a>. If things get screwed up badly, it will need someone on a Linux machine to sort it out.
