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184 lines
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184 lines
9.7 KiB
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<title>CUCC Website Genesis</title>
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<h2 id="tophead">CUCC Expedition Handbook - Expo Website Genesis</h2>
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<h1>Taking Expo Bullshit into the 21st Century</h1>
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<p align="center"><em>Cambridge Underground 1996, pp 61-62</em></p>
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<p><b><i>by AERW</i></b></center>
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<p>[This article was published in CU 1996, shortly after the site was put
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on the web. The text is reproduced without change, but the URLs were
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updated (in 2006) to reflect the then location of these pages.]
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<p>For many years, the only documentation of CUCC's activities in Austria
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comprised the Log Books written "in the field" and an article or two in the
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annual "Cambridge Underground". A few write ups appeared in "BCRA Caves and
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Caving" or "Descent", and occasionally a lecture would occur at the BCRA
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Conference. The standard of underground surveying was poor and, for the most
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part, surface surveying was non-existant. Often the only way to find some of
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the earlier cave discoveries was to collar the people who found them and get
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them to show you. Regrettably, even this didn't always work. Looking for
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going leads often involved grovelling on the floor of the Potato Hut to
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find an old logbook in a tatty cardboard box, then wading through it to
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find the relevant write up and trying to make some sense of it. All this
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before even going underground !
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<p>Today, we exchange survey data with other groups working in the area, and
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all of CUCC's internal and published documentation is available in a few
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minutes anywhere in the world. Logbook write-ups are linked to cave
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descriptions, maps, and even colour photos, and "every" going lead or
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prospect is cross-referenced to the cave description. What on earth
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happened to bring this all about ?
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<p>Two things - technology, and Kaninchenhöhle. The technology made it
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all possible, and Kaninchenhöhle provided the stimulus to do it.
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<p>To explain: for many years, Andy had been quietly sticking all of CUCC's
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cave descriptions, together with what translations of Austrian ones I could
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get/make, into a catalogue of caves which was supposed to be useful in
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Austria to prevent duplication of effort, and to avoid losing caves
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completely. A printed version occupied a very hefty ring-binder and was not
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found tremendously useful, particularly as maps were somewhat lacking. Trying
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to get the information to keep it any less than about five years out of date
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was also a losing battle. Some of the cave descriptions are inevitably quite
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complex, and Kaninchenhöhle, in particular, has so many side leads and
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connections between main routes that the description was becoming impossible
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to understand.
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<p>It is a feature of complex cave descriptions that the main route becomes
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hard to follow as more and more side passages get into the description.
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If the side passages are instead described somewhere else, then it is equally
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difficult to follow the route to the going leads at their ends. There doesn't
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seem to be an effective solution to this in a printed guidebook, but by
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writing the description in hyper-text, the side passage descriptions can
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be removed from the main route without making them inaccessible. At each
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junction, the passage is merely noted, and the main description continues.
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But the note includes a LINK which can instead be followed to read the
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full description of the side passage.
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<p>This approach was adopted for the KH description and proved rather
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successful. However, the resulting description lacked context, and soon links
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appeared to various other text files, which in turn were turned into
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hypertext. The process gradually took off, until by last year's (1995)
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expedition, all the cave descriptions were in this form, with additional
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material to describe each area on the surface and the approaches to use to
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get there. There were also a few photographs in the archive, though hardly
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enough to be useful.
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<p>A few journal articles and some of the older logbooks were also on disc,
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and it immediately became obvious that the value of these could be
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enhanced by adding links to the other material. Hence a cave description
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could have a link to the trip which discovered it; trips could be linked
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to the previous and subsequent trips to the same place (not necessarily
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in the same logbook) and journal articles could likewise be linked to
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the relevant cave description.
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<p>As the process took off, the gaps became more obvious, so progressively
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more logbooks have been transcribed and journal articles either retrieved
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from mouldering floppies or typed in afresh. Some early (and painful)
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attempts to represent logbook sketches in ascii text have been superceded
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by scanned-in material and the archive continued to build.
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<p>All of this represented a considerable amount of work, and the danger with
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such things is always that it will get lost, neglected or fall into disuse.
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However, stuff on disc can always be distributed to many people, in the
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hope that even if disaster befalls one copy of the archive, someone else
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will have an intact copy. In this way, hundreds of kilobytes of updated
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descriptions were soon passing backwards and forwards by email between
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Andy and Wookey each week. But the material was still only available to
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a tiny handful of people.
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<p>The format in which all this work had been carried out was, from the very
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start, the very same format which was needed to make it widely available
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on the Internet in the form of World-Wide-Web pages. Soon, Wookey managed
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to find us a server which would put it all up for global access. This
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revealed a very large number of problems with the system, but a couple
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of weeks work fixed most of these. A Cambridge University Caving Club
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home page was created, and the expedition archive (by now around five
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hundred separate files) hung below this. The CUCC pages are still a bit
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limited (the Home page, a brief description of the club and one of exCS,
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and an (old) version of the Novice's Guide to CUCC). However, it is
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hoped that CUCC itself will provide up-to-the-minute pages covering current
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club activities and perhaps even a weekly copy of the club newsletter ?
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<p>It is hoped that by the time you are reading this, all the extant logbooks
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and all the Cambridge Underground articles will be on the server, together
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with fully up-to-date descriptions of all CUCC's caves that we still have
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info for. The "Expedition slide set" which has been in gestation for over
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five years might even come together this year, in which case a Photo-CD
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can be made and a lot of much more useful pictures added to the archive.
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This is by no means the end of the road however. There are still many
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surveys and logbook sketches to scan, and we have a clickable map of the
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surface to take you straight to the cave descriptions (but unfortunately
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the server does not yet support this). There is foreign material from other
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groups in the area to add, and we have links to another web site being run
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by one of the German groups working in the area. The format allows for
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things like video clips and sound, as well as text and photos so we have
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the tantalising prospect of bringing a load of drunken students singing
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"Wild Caver" to your computer screen...
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<p>However, like the caves themselves, the web site is not easy to describe
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in printed text. We hope you'll try it for yourself, get enthused about expo,
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and want to come along and contribute. We hope it's structured so that you
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can find your way about fairly easily - if you have problems, please let us
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know so that we can fix it during the ongoing process of development. To ease
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your way, here are a few selected entry points. Note that the names are
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case-sensitive, and that the initial "cucc" is lower case.
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<p>[<em>All those links are now incorrect and don't work. They have been commented-out. Press ctrl-U if you want to see them.</em>]
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<!--
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<dl>
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<dt>CUCC Home page
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<dd><a href="index.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/</a>
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<dt>Expo Home page
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<dd><a href="expo/">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/index.htm</a>
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<dt>Colour pictures
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<dd><a href="expo/gallery/0.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/gallery/0.htm</a>
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<dt>Kaninchenhöhle
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<dd><a href="expo/smkridge/161/top.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/smkridge/161/top.htm</a>
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<dt>New entrance
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<dd><a href="expo/smkridge/161/sftotp.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/smkridge/161/sftotp.htm</a>
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<dt>Stellerweg etc.
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<dd><a href="expo/smkridge/41/41.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/smkridge/41/41.htm</a>
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<dt>LogBooks
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<dd>http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/years/<year>/log.htm
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where <year> is 1976, 1977, ... 1995
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<dt>Index of articles
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<dd><a href="expo/pubs.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/pubs.htm</a>
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<dt>Index of caves
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<dd><a href="expo/indxal.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/indxal.htm</a>
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<dt>Recent changes
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<dd><a href="expo/update.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/update.htm</a>
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</dl>
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-->
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<p>If there's anything you think is wrong, anything you think is missing, or
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anything you have to offer to add, please get in touch at
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<p>Andy Waddington (mailbox 'Austria' on site 'pennine.demon.co.uk')<br>
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Wookey (mailbox 'Wookey' on site 'aleph1.co.uk')
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<p>and finally, the entire web edifice will be out in Austria [in 1997] on one or more
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machines in the Potato hut for expo members to browse through (and add to)
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to answer all your questions about the caves of the Loser Plateau ! If
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enough interest is shown, and enough photographs digitised, the current
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"state-of-the-art" may be put onto CD-ROM. The site has outgrown floppies,
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but can still be fitted onto a ZIP disc so, for the time being, if you
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haven't got Internet connectivity, the edifice can be supplied on disc.
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<p>Andy Waddington
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<p><hr>
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</body>
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</html>
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