Journal Import - My Experience (page 4) - CycleBlaze

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Journal Import - My Experience (page 4)

Scott AndersonTo Suzanne Gibson

glad you got it to work, by whatever route.  I’m not sure, but the event box may not appear until you’ve already created one.  Whatever.

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2 years ago
George HallTo George Hall

Since I've learned a bit from the responses to this post, I thought I'd summarize my total export-import experience.  There are several things you need to do if you want to export everything from the other site;

1.) use the export functionality of the other site to download the bulk of your journal(s).   Jeff can import these files so that the bulk of the work is done for you - but the line is getting long and you can expect to wait a bit before that happens.  If you don't want to wait, you can create a new journal and do the import yourself, bringing in the text and photos as you would do for a new journal.  If you have your own copies of the text and photos, this might be a good option for you.

2.) if you created maps, then export the GPX files so you can re-create the maps in RWGPS or other program.  Thanks to earlier commenters who pointed this out.  Once you create the route in RWGPS, you can embed the map into your journal here.  I haven't done that yet, but I have the GPX files saved so that I can do it someday.

3.) don't forget to copy the comments from the Guestbook if you want those.  I just copied them all into a Word file for my future reference.  

Having done all this, and after checking over each day's entry in each journal to be sure it was complete (a couple of pictures didn't transfer), I deleted my journals from the other site and then deleted my account.  

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2 years ago
Suzanne GibsonTo Scott Anderson

It does appear now, but when I click it, it again takes me to the calendar where I can create a new event.

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2 years ago
Mark BoydTo Mark Boyd

I've finished copying my most recent crazyguy journal to cycleblaze and learned quite a bit in doing the copy process. The main time consumer was copying images. The thirty pages of that journal had several hundred images and, even after I figured out how to copy them efficiently, it still took over 1 minute per image.

I used ChromeOS screen capture, from my HD+ Chromebook screen. In order to copy an image from a web page, I moved the image's bottom edge, which might include a caption, to the bottom edge of the screen and, after copying the screen, used current ChromeOS's  simple image editing to crop the non image material from the screen image.  Most of the pages from that tour start with a block of text and end with a bunch of images, some of which have associated text in their captions. I just treated the captions as part of the image when copying them. Functionally, crazyguy captions are images of text, not actual text, so that is what makes sense.

cycleblaze can copy a large group of image files in one action and insert them into one of it's web pages and then you can cut and paste blocks of text above, between, or below any of the images. crazyguy images share this basic format and so do most of the web pages I created by HTML coding before I started using crazyguy so it is pretty straight forward to copy from one kind of web page to the other as long as the images are not 'taller' than your display screen height and are simply centered on the screen. I did discover some re-sizing issues with taller images.

I plan to try transferring one of my many pre-crazyguy journals next. During my first three years - 95-96-97 - of creating journals, digital cameras were not available and my first digital camera - Nikon Coolpix - wasn't good enough to replace the 35mm film cameras I used  while touring so I didn't have a decent way of creating digital mages on the road till 99.   My Summer Tour 99 journal has 55 pages formatted pretty much like crazyguy tour pages and covers roughly a 5000 mile tour loop in the US and Canada.  The route is shown on http://www.cs.unca.edu/~boyd/touring/tour99/day0/route.htm   http://www.cs.unca.edu/~boyd/touring/tour99/tour.htm 

is the tour journal I'm copying

I'll start working on copying it to cycleblaze tonight. I figure it will take me at least a week to copy it. 

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2 years ago
Mark BoydTo Mark Boyd

It took me two weeks to finish copying that journal because I was sick for a week in the middle of the process. I finished it tonight.  

My https://www.cs.unca.edu/~boyd/bicycling.html pages have roughly 15 years worth of my ride reports. Most of those years include a long summer tour like tour99 with 50+ days as well as shorter tours and touring related web pages. It would literally take me years to 'copy' all the touring pages over to cycleblaze. I'm not going to do that since those pages are still available to anyone who wants to read them. I also have more than 10 years worth of long  tours and many articles on crazyguy. My user ID there is mjb. 

Tour99 was my fourth long tour and the first with a half-decent digital camera. That was over 20 years ago so the image quality was not great- I could probably do better now with a cheap phone - but the tour substance is solid - and back then I was regularly doing 100 mile days, so that journal covers a lot of territory ;-}. Even in my older journals  like tour99 there is a lot of good information about the roads, etc which is still useful. I've toured in 35 countries and tried to write useful ride reports in all of them.

I'll probably copy at least one the more recent ride report  from my own web site and  another one from crazyguy to cycleblaze just to give other cycleblaze users more samples of my work. 

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2 years ago
Susan ShoreTo George Hall

Thanks everyone for the hints and tips.  I've been editing all of my journals prior to releasing them here, as I'd like to make sure everything is complete in case they get removed from that other site when noticed here.  Paranoia?  Maybe.  I've been working on the maps.  When I started, I was able to click on a map line on that other site and download a GPX file.  A week or 2 ago, after a pause of several days or a week on my part, the behavior changed and now I can only download a FIT file.  RWGPS interprets this as a ride rather than a route.  It also requires a route to make an event, so now I can't get multiple segments onto one map.  Anyone else run into this?  Any solution?  Thanks again!

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2 years ago
Mark BoydTo Susan Shore

I, as I have said, have lots of ride reports and other touring  related articles on that other site. Nothing has been done to interfere with my stuff there. Yes, there have been major changes there recently which make my journals look a little different and, I'm sure cause other issues, but thinking that those issues as being somehow connected with your use of  cycleblaze is not justified. 

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2 years ago
Susan ShoreTo Mark Boyd

Thanks for the reply, Mark.  I didn't think that my GPX vs FIT file was connected to Cycleblaze, and apologize if I gave that impression.  I just thought that people here are also moving journals over, and might have run into the issue with getting a FIT file instead of GPX, and FIT files being rides instead of routes in RWGPS.  That's what I'm trying to solve, since it brings me back to the problem of putting several gps tracks onto the same map.

I'm glad to hear that nothing was done to your stuff on the other site.  I have the (perhaps mistaken) impression that's not true for everyone who has transferred journals.  I just mentioned a concern because I wanted people to understand why I'm asking questions about moving journals, but my journals don't show up yet.  I don't think we need further discussion about that.  Just perhaps about FIT file and maps!

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2 years ago
Mark BoydTo Susan Shore

I did look up FIT files before responding to your post. FIT is a Garmin format and, apparently, software for dealing with it is not available under ChromeOS which, for the last decade, is the OS I use, so I didn't explore any further. RWGPS also supports them,  but I haven't used it in many years. It is possible that it might be useful for combining FIT files. 

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2 years ago
Susan CarpenterTo Susan Shore

Hi Susan

I’ve never imported any journals so can’t comment on GPX/FIT issues. I’m not sure this will solve your problem - but if you open your ride on the RWGPS web site (not app) there is a panel on the left with options to Pin, Share, Edit, and More. If you pull down the More menu, you can select Copy to my Routes. This should change the ride to a route. It may not be the most direct fix, but it may help. Good luck.

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2 years ago