The GHAWG Diaries, Part 60

What's happening behind the scenes to bring new GHAWG content? The GHAWG Diaries is my recap of what I've been doing.

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^{Cover image designed by @magnacarta using emojis and Excel 2007 for text. Minor edits made using MS Paint.}

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Introduction

There's more to #GHAWG than just daily zapfic entries and the spreadsheet I use to track them. There's research. There's review. There's also thought and inspiration. Then there are the tools involved in doing any of those tasks.

Just to keep things from getting scrambled in my head, and also to document for myself what I've been considering, I began keeping a diary of my activities as they concern #GHAWG. For that reason, I decided to share these diary entries with everyone on Hive blockchain (including the LeoFinance community at InLeo).

On Mondays which don't feature a GHAWG, Uninterrupted post (GHAWG-U)-- eventually replaced by GHAWG, Remastered (GHAWG-R)-- I'll post diary entries from the previous 7 days or between GHAWG-U/R posts if the time between them is short. For TGD60, there are 7 days' worth of diary entries. The first entry starts on 2025-January-13.

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Before anyone scratches their heads at a few terms, here are 3 I began using many posts ago:

Monday, 2025-January-13

📓 I'm still wondering what to write about during the segment of David Guardia's Epic Ride from Chicago, Illinois, US, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US, the town where The Kids attend UNC. I need to review digital maps to see what's there to see if I can make use of what I discover. Unlike the Route 66 storyline, where one GHAWG day could span many zapfic entries, That won't be the case for this segment of the Epic Ride as a whole, even if there will be one day which requires a lot of zapfic entries. All I can do is see what opportunities present themselves and wing it.

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Tuesday, 2025-January-14

📓 How easy is it to assign a one-letter code to a month name? January is assigned "A"; February is assigned "B"; etc. through December (which is assigned "L"). This is what I've been doing with zapfic entries for GHAWG since summer 2024. I can do this manually since I've been doing this sort of thing since my days working in retail during the 1990s, but that gets tedious after a while. So how would I do it using my spreadsheet?

First, I create a 2-column table. First column has month names, second column has the one-letter codes.

Next, I do a lookup. There are at least 8 ways I can perform this lookup.

Once I choose the correct one-letter code, I join it to a number representing the day of the month (which stays a number).

The reason I want to do this is to automate as much as I can the image generating I do with my spreadsheet before I make the screen capture I publish to LeoThreads (more or less) on a daily basis. Even after I "calculate" the correct month-date code (such as "A14" for today, January 14th), I need to associate this formula with the text box I use to display this code. I have to do it this way since I can't add the code to the actual image I use as the backdrop for the final image.

I know how to do this, of course. However, I need to find a way to explain this process from start to finish. It's not difficult, but it takes a lot of steps. Then there are the screen captures I need to make to illustrate each step. I won't publish this post any time soon, but it is part of how I do my work in publishing GHAWG content daily to Hive blockchain.

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Wednesday, 2025-January-15

📓 Today I was reviewing digital maps to see where Felix Legion is en route to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Based on where I left off in the zapfic queue, Felix Legion is two or three days away from UNC. During the remaining stretch of riding until reaching Chapel Hill, I will add zapfic entries taking place elsewhere. Some will take place in Chicago, Illinois, US to see how Lieutenant Terry Leo is doing as Republican candidate for Mayor of Chicago. Some will take place halfway around the world since they will affect Sanjay Rampersad (and, indirectly, Felix Legion). Looming over the horizon is the key scene taking place in the purely fictional town of Bolivion, Virginia, US.

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Thursday, 2025-January-16

📓 It's been a while, but I added entries to the zapfic queue. At this time, the zapfic queue has entries going to 2025-January-29. The new additions take place in Ripley, West Virginia, US. Besides interactions between members of Felix Legion, there are entries taking place on the other side of the world. The entries will impact Sanjay Rampersad directly, and the will affect not only Felix Legion but also The GHAWG Universe going forward.

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Friday, 2025-January-17

📓 It's been a long time since I did a "Fun with Maps" post as part of the "GHAWG Behind the Scenes" series. Gathering the data I need for those posts was educational and fun for me, even if it took time to find the information I wanted. However, what took just as much time was the graphics, both the post's cover image as well as whatever images are used within the post.

The best way for me to use "Fun with Maps" is, well, to show what interesting places are along the path taken at first by David Guardia, then David with the uncanny Manny Rey, later with his future riding companions. Since these images rely on screen captures, sometimes I have to make multiple screen captures to piece them together to make the map I want to show before I can edit that map to show the fun with maps I was having.

Before I can resume publishing "Fun with Maps" posts regularly, I need to find a way to deal with the graphics problem. Even if I used AI tools made for graphics, I'm not sure how they would help me accomplish my goals; it's not as if I'm telling the AI tool to draw me an image from scratch. So I'm leaning to setting up a "Fun with Maps" queue where I compile my data first. When I have enough data to match the screen captures I have at the moment, then I combine content and maps into a post I can publish. For now, I'll hold off on resuming "Fun with Maps".

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Saturday, 2025-January-18

📓 From Ripley, West Virginia, US to Summerville, WV, US the digital maps showed one route. Where the zapfic queue ends, Felix Legion finds itself near Mink Shoals, WV, US. I wanted to remove Ripley from the travel queue I have on the digital maps so that travel to Summerville resumes from Mink Shoals. To my surprise, digital maps showed me a different route to Summerville. It may be because I had specified toll-free riding for my digital map directions. It's just as well since the new route follows a path more in tune with the route I wanted Felix Legion to take.

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Sunday, 2025-January-19

📓 I extended the zapfic queue to EOM, 2025-January-31. By this point, I'm getting Sanjay Rampersad more involved in the story as Felix Legion rides from Chicago, Illinois, US to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There were more character interactions I wanted to write, but at this point Felix Legion is about 2 GHAWG days away from Chapel Hill. More importantly, Felix Legion is about 1 day away from the fictional Virginia town of Bolivion. Without getting into details, it will be in Bolivion where we will see at least a few members of Felix Legion as we had never seen them before.

##When (and Where) To Catch #GHAWG

When

● Daily -- Each zapfic entry is posted shortly after midnight, from New York
● Weekends -- Weekly Summaries (with modified screen capture from LeoThreads as cover image) are usually on Saturday, sometimes Sunday
● Monday -- Either GHAWG, Uninterrupted if present, or The GHAWG Diaries
● Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday -- GHAWG Behind the Scenes -- The goal is to publish these posts on all days not dedicated to the Weekly Sumamry, GHAWH-U, or The GHAWG Diaries (TGD). There may be days with no post, so I'll minimize those occasions as best as I can.This is the normal schedule for the posting of content for #GHAWG:

Where

● Daily zapfic entries drop at LeoThreads, usually posted shortly after midnight from New York (sometimes around noon)
● All long form posts-- Weekly Summaries, GHAWG-U, and TGD-- can be accessed using the #GHAWGnav sticky post or from my InLeo profile page

That's it for this edition of The GHAWG Diaries. I'm ^[!!]
Thanks for your time. Give the post an upvote or a reblog if you liked it. Feedback is welcome. Until next time!

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-- Graphic signature was designed by @ahmadmanga

Posted Using INLEO