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.

Why the logbook is important

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.

Always, always write the date, your name and the names of other people involved at the top of each entry. If you mention a cave location, please also write down the cave name somewhere. In 10 years no-one will know where "Lemon Snout" is.

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

If you are at basecamp, then it is an excellent idea to type the text of your logbook trip report instead of writing it by hand - see below. But still do lots of drawings in the paper logbook.

The contents of both the topcamp logbook and the basecamp logbook are typed into the same "logbook.html" file for future use in tracking down leads and surveys. The drawings are scanned and stored in the same place, and hand-edited into the logbook.html file after expo finished. The typed notes are uploaded into the expo server database and correlated with survey data done on the same day or by the same people.

Recent logbooks:

All these logbook entries are then typed into a laptop (often the expo laptop) which is then synchronised the version control system.

The result is a webpage reporting who did what and what was done by whom on expo, e.g. see the 2018 expo report.

Typing just your trip report (at the Expo Laptop)

If you are at basecamp, then it is an excellent idea to type up your logbook trip report. You can then print this and stick it in the logbook, adding any sketches by hand. This will save someone (probably you) deciphering your handwriting and typing it up later.

These instructions assume that (a) you are sitting at the expo laptop and that someone who knows the password has logged in for you (as user "expo"), and (b) that you know nothing about the software systems used by expo.

The first challenge is to find how to start up the text editor. The expo laptop is running debian Linux with the Gnome 3.2 desktop manager, so click on "Activities" in the top left corner. This will bring down a vertical menu of icons down the left hand side of the screen. Hovering over the icons brings up a label, and the one you want is at (or near) the bottom with the label "Text editor". Click on it.

If you are lucky this will bring up an empty window for a new file.
If you are unlucky it will bring up the previous person's file.

If it is a new file, save it to the Downloads folder (/home/expo/Downloads) using the "File->Save" menu item and give it a sensible name such as "logbook-mynewtrip.txt".

If it was someone else's file, save it using the "File->Save" menu. Then close the text editor ("File->Close"). Then start it up again from the vertical icon menu as before.

Now type in your trip report using whatever format you like, but please leave a blank line between paragraphs.

Adding your trip to the logbook online file

If you are using the expo laptop just edit this file (if you are on expo in 2025): /home/expo/expoweb/years/2025/logbook.html copy the format you can see other people have used; 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:

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

Typing on another machine

Rather than editing logbook.html when you type up your trip, it is a much better idea to type up just your trip(s) in a separate file, e.g. "logbook-mynewtrip.txt", and email it to a nerd if you are sitting at a different laptop.

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 ===
{Text of logbook entry}
T/U: Jess 1 hr, Emma 0.5 hr

Importing the logbook into troggle

This is usually done after expo but it is in excellent idea to have a nerd do this a couple of times during expo to discover problems while the people are still around to ask.

The nerd needs to login to the expo server using their own userid, not the 'expo' userid. The nerd also needs to be in the group that is allowed to do 'sudo'.

The nerd needs to do this:

  1. Look at the list of pre-existing old import errors at
    http://expo.survex.com/admin/core/dataissue/
    The nerd will have to login to the troggle management console to do this, not just the usual troggle login.
  2. You need to get the list of people on expo sorted out first.
    This is documented in the Folk Update process.
  3. Log in to the expo server and run the update script (see below for details)
  4. Watch the error messages scroll by, they are more detailed than the messages archived in the old import errors list
  5. Edit the logbook.html file to fix the errors. These are usually typos, non-unique tripdate ids or unrecognised people. Some unrecognised people will mean that you have to fix them using the Folk Update process first.
  6. Re-run the import script until you have got rid of all the import errors.
  7. Pat self on back. Future data managers and people trying to find missing surveys will worship you.

The procedure is like this. It will be familiar to you because you will have already done most of this for the Folk Update process. 

ssh  {youruserid}@expo.survex.com
cd ~expo
cd troggle
sudo python databaseReset.py logbooks

It will produce a list of errors like this, starting with the most recent logbook which will be the one for the expo you are working on. You can abort the script (Ctrl-C) when you have got the errors for the current expo that you are going to fix 

Loading Logbook for: 2017
 - Parsing logbook: 2017/logbook.html
 - Using parser: Parseloghtmltxt
Calculating GetPersonExpeditionNameLookup for 2017
   - No name match for: 'Phil'
   - No name match for: 'everyone'
   - No name match for: 'et al.'
("can't parse: ", u'\n\n<img src="logbkimg5.jpg" alt="New Topo" />\n\n')
   - No name match for: 'Goulash Regurgitation'
   - Skipping logentry: Via Ferata: Intersport - Klettersteig - no author for entry
   - No name match for: 'mike'
   - No name match for: 'Mike'