JohnathanOneal.github.io

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Travel journals

The travel index is at /travels/. Scotland (October 2026) and Japan (March 2025) are draft journals. Scotland currently includes Day 0 departure, Day 1 arrival and rail travel, Day 2 walking and Dalwhinnie, and Day 3's Bealach circuit and Blair Athol distillery. Days are edited individually from the saved photo favourites. Content is stored in docs/_data/travels.json; the shared layouts render the index and each trip.

To fill in a trip, set its introduction, optional cover and cover_alt, then add entries to stops in travel order. Each stop uses this structure:

{
  "label": "Day 2",
  "title": "A walking loop",
  "day_number": 2,
  "route_from": "place-id",
  "route_to": "place-id",
  "transport": "walk",
  "map_view": "trail",
  "route_points": [[56.70, -3.73], [56.72, -3.75], [56.70, -3.73]],
  "map_start": 0,
  "map_end": 1,
  "date_label": "Day or date",
  "notes": "Your notes, with optional Markdown.",
  "photos": [
    {
      "src": "/assets/travels/trip-slug/photo.jpg",
      "alt": "Description of the photograph",
      "caption": "Optional caption",
      "map_position": 0.5,
      "width": 1600,
      "height": 1200
    }
  ]
}

Each stop is a story section; a day can have several sections. Point IDs refer to entries in story_map.places. route_points is an illustrative path in [latitude, longitude] order; flights can omit it to use an arc. map_position ties each photo to progress along its section's route. Views can be flight, city, regional, or trail. Walkers use a simple dot; vehicle silhouettes are limited to plane, train, and bus. Example coordinates above are illustrative.

Keep source originals outside the published docs/ directory. Read capture dates and GPS from those originals before producing smaller website images; retain manual stop assignments separately so rebuilding images cannot lose the itinerary. The source album or cloud link is only a transfer mechanism.

Trip pages follow the layout and scrolling behavior of Koya Bound: a full-height photographic opening, a narrow photo/story column on the left, and a fixed illustrated map behind it on the right. Scrolling continuously advances the route, pans and zooms the drawing, and links visible photos to the map with subtle cones. Transport markers are simple plane, train (including Tube), or bus silhouettes.

The trip map is drawn locally in Canvas from public-domain Natural Earth geography with local elevation contours and water outlines; it does not load a street-map service. Day 0 uses the user-confirmed Boston departure and Heathrow destination. Its arc is an illustration of the itinerary, not a flight track or recovered photo GPS. The plane remains in transit at the end of Day 0; arrival belongs to Day 1. Day 1 switches to a train marker for the Tube and the LNER north to Pitlochry. Day 2 has three movements: the Craigower loop, the train to Dalwhinnie and back, and the Loch Faskally/fish-ladder loop. Walking sections zoom into local contours and reference trail outlines; train sections pull back. These are approximations of the itinerary, not the user's recorded GPS tracks. The travel index uses Leaflet 1.9.4.

Day 3 follows the Walkhighlands Bealach stage sequence using an independently reconstructed, generalized OSM path outline: over the pass to Killiecrankie, back beside the River Garry and Loch Faskally, then straight to Blair Athol in Pitlochry. It is one continuous walking chapter with the same Bealach framing throughout. The distillery is the final endpoint; there is no intermediate Pitlochry stop or separate distillery scene. zoom_factor and camera_follow control the chapter's map framing.

Day 4 alternates three train journeys with two continuous walking scenes: Dunkeld & Birnam station through the Hermitage and back via Dunkeld, then Blair Atholl station through Blair Castle and its grounds. The Atholl Arms stays within the castle walk; Robertson's music and whisky close the return to Pitlochry. story_map.terrain_layers adds local terrain assets while preserving the original Pitlochry layer. The Scotland cover uses IMG_3495.HEIC, with cover_position controlling its full-screen crop.

The castle walk continues from Hercules Garden through the northern woods and St Bride's Kirk. Days 5 and 6 add the train to Edinburgh and one continuous city walk per day: Johnnie Walker, Fishers and the nighttime return; then the castle, National Gallery, Calton Hill and Stramash. Edinburgh uses its own local terrain layer. Pub and meal photos remain within their day's walking scene.

Days 7–9 finish the itinerary: Stockbridge and the Botanics, the airport bus and flight to Dublin, a continuous Dublin walk, and the direct flight to Boston. The photo-free final flight uses arrival_passage to place its arrival anchor before the bottom of the page, so scrolling can complete the Atlantic crossing. opening_passage can put travel space before an arrival photo. Walking lines, the airport bus corridor and flight arcs remain approximate illustrations.

The Dublin day starts and ends in Smithfield. Photo positions use monotone cubic interpolation to keep their locations exact while easing changes in speed. Chapter changes blend routes, markers and labels; the camera and vehicle heading ease separately. Backward scrolling enters a chapter at the current reading position, and reduced-motion preferences bypass the animations. Run node scripts/test_journey.mjs to check photo alignment and interpolation.

From the docs directory, run bundle exec jekyll serve to preview.

For a travel-only preview without Ruby, install scripts/requirements-travel-preview.txt, then run python scripts/preview_travels.py from the repository root. Open http://127.0.0.1:4173/travels/scotland-2026/#stop-1. It renders the same travel templates with Python Liquid and automatically reloads when their content, styles, or images change. This is a local editing preview, not a full Jekyll build of the rest of the site.

Local photo selection

The preview also serves /review/scotland-2026/, a chronological contact sheet with a day selector, larger photo views, and favourite buttons. Selections save automatically in .travel-review/scotland-2026/favorites.json; this library is gitignored and is not part of the public website. The approved three Day 0 photos are initially selected. Subsequent days are edited from the user's picks, with supporting photos chosen as needed.

The sheet includes all 475 still photos from the supplied Scotland ZIP. Photos sort by their original capture timestamp, timezone, and subsecond value. The single screenshot without a timezone uses the dominant timezone for that date and is marked approximate. Thumbnails use cached review images when available; opening a photo generates a larger, color-corrected copy from the untouched ZIP.

The local preparation command is python scripts/prepare_photo_review.py --archive "path/to/Scotland 2026.zip" --inventory "path/to/inventory.json". The inventory is the photo metadata report generated during ZIP inspection. Rebuilding thumbnails preserves existing favourites.