CUCC Expedition Handbook

Logbooks

As soon as possible after a trip finishes, a hand-written write-up of the trip is made in the nearest logbook: the base camp logbook or the top camp logbook. All these logbook entries are then typed into a laptop (often the expo laptop) which is then synchronised the version control system.

The logbook writeup is the oldest and most basic way of recording your trip but it must not be neglected. This is also where you put your speculations and ideas for what looks promising and what is obvious but doesn't go: things that are vital to future expoers. And please, please do lots of sketches in the logbook.

If this is all new to you, please now read Cave data management, and why we make surveys and then the Survey Handbook

Where the logbook computer file is kept

If you are using the expo laptop just edit this file:

/home/expoweb/years/2018/logbook.html

and other people will take care of synchronising it with the version control system.

DO NOT take a copy of the logbook.html file from the expo laptop, copy it by email or USB stick to another laptop, edit it there and then copy it back. That will delete other people's work.

If you are using your own laptop then you will need to either:

Just type up your trip as a separate file, or just write it in an email, and send it to someone nerdish, or
install and learn how to use the version control software. And you will need to synchronise regularly (every day) to ensure that the updates from all the people entering trip data are OK and don't get overwritten by ignorant use of this software.

Logbooks are typed up and kept in the [expoweb]/years/[nnnn]/ directory as 'logbook.html'.

Format of the online logbooks

Do whatever you like to try and represent the logbook in html. The only rigid structure is the markup to allow troggle to parse the files into 'trips':

<div class="tripdate" id="t2007-07-12B">2007-07-12</div>
<div class="trippeople"><u>Jenny Black</u>, Olly Betts</div>
<div class="triptitle">Top Camp - Setting up 76 bivi</div>
<div class="timeug">T/U 10 mins</div>

Note that the ID's must be unique, so are generated from 't' plus the trip date plus a,b,c etc. when there is more than one trip on a day.

T/U stands for "Time Underground" in hours (6 minutes would be "0.1 hours").

Historical logbooks

Older logbooks (prior to 2007) were stored as logbook.txt with just a bit of consistent markup to allow troggle parsing.

The formatting was largely freeform, with a bit of markup ('===' around header, bars separating date, - , and who) which allows the troggle import script to read it correctly. The underlines show who wrote the entry. There is also a format for time-underground info so it can be automagically tabulated.

So the format should be:

===2009-07-21|204 - Rigging entrance series| Becka Lawson, Emma Wilson, Jess Stirrups, Tony Rooke===

<Text of logbook entry>

T/U: Jess 1 hr, Emma 0.5 hr

Expedition Handbook