dd

How to Add More Social Media Icons to Divi

Divi lets you control and design every detail of your website, from header to footer and everything in between. Some of the most-clicked elements of any website are social media icons. An engaged audience wants to find you elsewhere and get to know you. Obviously you’ll want to make that as easy and frictionless as […]

The post How to Add More Social Media Icons to Divi appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.




dd

Saddle Bag Mountain Research Natural Area: guidebook supplement 34.

This guidebook describes the Saddle Bag Mountain Research Natural Area, a 121-ha (300-ac) tract established to represent an old-growth remnant of Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) forest in the Oregon Coast Range. Pacific silver fir and noble fir (Abies procera) occur as isolated remnants, and both species are approaching the southern limits of their natural range in the Oregon Coast Range.




dd

What time is the Queen's VE Day address to the nation?

The Queen will be making a special address this Friday evening to mark Victory in Europe Day




dd

WBUR/Boston Adds 'The Daily'

BOSTON UNIVERSITY News-Talk WBUR/BOSTON is adding the syndicated radio version of THE NEW YORK TIMES' "THE DAILY" for 9p (ET) weeknights, followed by MARKETPLACE at 9:30, … more




dd

Commander Chuck Adds North Mississippi Radio Group Trio To Traffic Report Affiliate List

ON TIME TRAFFIC NETWORK's COMMANDER CHUCK JOHNSON is now heard on NORTH MISSISSIPPI RADIO GROUP's stations, Classic Hits WOWW-A-W249BN (97.7 GUESS FM), Country WEBL (95.3 THE REBEL), … more




dd

Clint Marsh Adds SVP Stripes At Futuri Media

CLINT MARSH has been promoted to SVP/Product at CLEVELAND-based FUTURI MEDIA. He joined the company in 2016 as Partner Integration Specialist (NET NEWS 7/25/2016), and was promoted to … more




dd

Brett Young Is Most-Added With 'Lady'

Congratulations to BMLG RECORDS' BRETT YOUNG, who earned 54 MEDIABASE adds for his new single, "Lady," making it the most-added record in Country radio this week.  Kudos to … more




dd

Sony/ATV Adds Two Executives In Nashville

SONY/ATV NASHVILLE has hired two new executives. CAM CALDWELL joins as VP/Business Affairs and COURTNEY PENDER comes aboard as VP/Human Resources. CALDWELL previously spent 10 years in … more




dd

Eastlan Ratings Adds Five New Markets

EASTLAN RATINGS has added five new markets, with continuous measurement being launched in the adjacent SAN LUIS OBISPO and SANTA MARIA, CA markets and once-a-year measurement on tap for … more




dd

'The Money Pit' Adds Four New Affiliates

"THE MONEY PIT HOME IMPROVEMENT SHOW" has been added at three more stations. Joining the show's affiliate roster are LIGHTNER COMMUNICATIONS News-Talk WRTA-A-W253CJ/ALTOONA, PA; … more




dd

RTDNA, Freedom Forum 'Local Broadcasters Town Hall' Seeks Presenters To Talk About Their Stations' Efforts To Address Pandemic

The RADIO TELEVISION DIGITAL NEWS ASSOCIATION and FREEDOM FORUM Power Shift Project are holding a "Local Broadcasters Town Hall" online on MAY 27th to highlight the work being done … more




dd

Brody Smith Joins WKJO (Country Superstars 102.3)/Raleigh, Adds Video Livestream For His Podcast

BRODY SMITH, the former iHEARTMEDIA AC KSNE (SUNNY 106.5)/LAS VEGAS. Top 40 WDCG (G105)/RALEIGH, and Top 40 WLDI (WILD 95.5)/W. PALM BEACH personality, has joined TRIANGLE MARKETING … more




dd

WNSH/New York Adds Inspirational Twist To Thomas Rhett's 'Be A Light'

ENTERCOM Country WNSH (NEW YORK's COUNTRY 94.7)/NEW YORK added sound bites from listeners to THOMAS RHETT's track, "Be A Light" (featuring Reba McEntire Hillary Scott, Chris … more




dd

JP Saxe & Julia Michaels Support Doctors Without Borders With New Star-Studded Video Of 'If The World Was Ending'

Singer-songwriter JP SAXE and GRAMMY Award-nominated artist JULIA MICHAELS today released a new video of their duet "If The World Was Ending" to help support the international … more




dd

KGSR (Star 93.3)/Austin Adds Brooke & Jeffrey For Mornings

WATERLOO MEDIA AC KGSR (STAR 93.3)/AUSTIN has added PREMIERE NETWORKS' SEATTLE-based syndicated morning show BROOKE & JEFFREY for mornings, effective MONDAY (5/4). PD KRASH KELLY … more




dd

Paddy Raff announces third SSE Arena Belfast show

After two sell-out shows to date, he's bringing Me, Myself and Nigel back to SSE Arena




dd

Craft Recordings Adds Victory Records Catalog

CONCORD’s catalog label, CRAFT RECORDINGS, welcomes legendary rock, metal, punk and hardcore label VICTORY RECORDS to its label family. The CHICAGO-based VICTORY RECORDS was acquired in … more




dd

Round Hill Music Adds Rock Label Black Hill Records; Announces New Executive Team

ROUND HILL MUSIC and its ROUND HILL RECORDS division has launched a new rock label, BLACK HILL RECORDS, and has signed its first three artists. The label, based in LOS ANGELES and distributed … more




dd

Sun Broadcast Group Adds Affiliates

SUN BROADCAST GROUP added 25 new affiliates to its roster in APRIL. The additions include: THE ROOSTER: S.I.P. BROADCASTING Top 40 WKLW (K-94.7)/PAINTSVILLE, KY EXPRESSVO: S.I.P. BROADCASTING … more




dd

What Will You And Your Station Do Differently Today To Make A Difference In Your Audience's Life In The Middle Of The COVID-19 Pandemic?

During the COVID-19 lockdown, and during the gradual re-opening of communities, PPM meters are now coming back online and meter counts are inching up as more people get in cars and resume a … more




dd

Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures Fame Dies at 101

The pioneering NASA mathematician overcame racial barriers to help humans reach the moon

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com




dd

Rock My Wedding

Rock My Wedding (RMW), part of the Rock My Ltd. group, which includes Rock My Family and Rock My Style, is the UK’s leading influential brand in the wedding industry. The biggest wedding blog and planning resource in the UK,...




dd

Daddys Takoyaki

Daddys Takoyaki is one of the best selling takoyaki franchises in Indonesia, We have gained the trust by the community because our sense takoyaki guaranteed 100% delicious and guaranteed kosher.




dd

Updated cholesterol guidelines offer more personalized risk assessment, additional treatment options for people at the highest risk

Statement Highlights: High cholesterol, at any age, can increase a person’s lifetime risk for heart disease and stroke. A healthy lifestyle is the first step in prevention and treatment to lower that risk. The 2018 guidelines recommend more detailed risk assessments to help health care providers better determine a person’s individualized risk and treatment options. In some cases, a coronary artery calcium score can help determine a person’s need for cholesterol-lowering treatment, if their risk status is uncertain or if the treatment decision isn't clear.




dd

Better lifestyle habits are useful additions to optimize management of atrial fibrillation

Statement Highlights: Improving lifestyle habits – such as attaining and maintaining a healthy body weight and getting regular, moderate physical activity – may be useful additions to physician-guided management of atrial fibrillation (AF), a serious...




dd

Women’s lifestyle changes, even in middle age, may reduce future stroke risk

Study Highlights: Middle age may not be too late for women to substantially lower their stroke risk through lifestyle modifications. Middle-aged women who quit smoking, started exercising, maintained a healthy weight and made healthy food choices saw...




dd

Leading Health Care Groups Issue Urgent Call for Federal Action to Address Medical Equipment Shortages

  WASHINGTON, D.C., March 30, 2020 — As longstanding organizations representing and supporting those on the front lines who are risking their lives caring for the world’s most vulnerable patients, we stand united in voicing our concern over the ...




dd

More than 200 patient groups call on Administration to take additional action to alleviate critical shortage of ventilators, PPE, ensure safety of providers, patients

Today, more than patient advocacy, medical and public health organizations sent a letter to senior Trump Administration officials, appealing to the Administration to take immediate action to alleviate the critical shortage across the nation ventilators...




dd

Interim CPR guidelines address challenges of providing resuscitation during COVID-19 pandemic

Embargoed until 8 a.m. CT / 9 a.m. ET Thursday, April 9, 2020   AHA COVID-19 newsroom   DALLAS, April 9, 2020 — With COVID-19 incidence currently increasing exponentially worldwide, the percentage of cardiac arrests with COVID-19 are also likely to...




dd

Students receive scholarships to help address health disparities

DALLAS, May 5, 2020 — Ten college students are receiving $10,000 scholarships from the American Heart Association for their work to help close health disparity gaps – which appear to contribute to disproportionately high rates of sickness and death among...




dd

Why Using WordPress Addons Will Benefit Your Business Website

Using WordPress for a business website is one of the best choices you can make as a business. It’s easy to get a site online and configured with a theme in under an hour. This is why WordPress now powers 35 percent of the websites on the internet. If you’re new to WordPress and don’t know why using WordPress plugins is helpful, this post will help. Below are seven benefits your business website will see when using plugins from the WordPress ecosystem. 1. Communicate With Customers It’s hard to run a business if your customers have no way to get

The post Why Using WordPress Addons Will Benefit Your Business Website appeared first on Photoshop Lady.




dd

How to Add a “Reading Mode” to Your Posts

In this post, I will show you a simple way to add a distraction-free "Reading Mode" to your blog. The purpose of adding a feature like this is to enable a visitor to remove all the clutter of your site, and focus solely on the post itself. In an ideal world; there would never be a need for such a feature. In reality though, sites have numerous other goals to achieve, such as brand building, serving ads, promoting other content etc. In this way, you can compromise between the two. Do what you need when the user first arrives, but get out of the way when they decide what to read.




dd

Las Pozas: The Surrealistic Wonderland Hidden in the Middle Of The Jungle

girlsthatwander After losing 20,000 orchids in an unseasonal frost, “extravagant” Englishman Edward James turned to his real love, surrealism, and...




dd

Best sports movies: ‘Caddyshack’ is a part of our vocabulary

Editor’s note: The Gazette sports staff has compiled lists of its top 15 favorite sports movies. Each day, a different staffer will share some insight into one of their favorites. Some of them...






dd

Tips for Managing a Sudden Surge of Sales

How do you handle a surge of eCommerce sales without stressing out? Learn how to streamline order fulfillment to keep your customers and employees happy.

The post Tips for Managing a Sudden Surge of Sales appeared first on WooCommerce.




dd

Adam Todd celebrates 21st birthday with parade

CEDAR RAPIDS — Adam Todd, adjusting like many Iowans to a social-distanced lifestyle since the novel coronavirus hit, celebrated a milestone 21st birthday with a drive-by parade Friday...




dd

Career shift! I’m adding some Focus to Thesis

Watch my video on how I’m changing my approach with Thesis to include a lot more Focus. When I launched Thesis 2 in October of 2012, my goal was to create something that could serve as the foundation for any WordPress design. That’s why I spent the next 2 years working on Skins, which are […]




dd

Can't add pagination on WooThemes Thick Theme

Everything I have tried has led to nothing. And I have tried six way’s from Sunday to get my main posts to paginate. example one: <?php $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; query_posts('offset=1&showposts=' . get_option('woo_other_entries') . '&cat=-' . $GLOBALS['ex_asides'] . '&paged=$paged' ); ?> example two: <?php global $myOffset; global $wp_query; $myOffset = 1; $paged […]

The post Can′t add pagination on WooThemes Thick Theme appeared first on WPCult.




dd

WPZoom: WordPress related Firefox Addons

Firefox is regarded as the best Web browser in terms of extensions. It has hundreds of add-ons, which can be downloaded from here. Pavel Ciorici collected the most useful WordPress related Firefox extensions (addons) and compiled them on this post. photo by: Pavel Ciorici

The post WPZoom: WordPress related Firefox Addons appeared first on WPCult.




dd

Adam Todd celebrates 21st birthday with parade

CEDAR RAPIDS — Adam Todd, adjusting like many Iowans to a social-distanced lifestyle since the novel coronavirus hit, celebrated a milestone 21st birthday with a drive-by parade Friday evening.

Todd, best known for being ABC World News Tonight Person of the Week in 2016, stood outside the Cedar Rapids house where he lives with his parents, Dale Todd, a Cedar Rapids City Council member, and Sara Todd, watching the cars drive by wishing him a happy birthday.

“My son has a bigger following than I would ever hope to have,” Dale Todd said. “Everybody knows he loves a parade. He loves the trucks and cars and people that are a part of that.

“There’s no better example that ‘it takes a village.’ He has had a team for 21 years.”

Todd, who will be graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

The parade was arranged by his mother, Sara, who invited friends and teachers to drive by between 5 and 6 p.m. to wave, shout happy birthday, hold up a sign, sing a song or do a dance, all from a safe distance — “whatever they’re able to,” she said.

Sara said Adam would have finished his last semester of education had the coronavirus not cut the school year short.

“That makes it extra special,” Sara said. “He hasn’t really gotten to say goodbye to his friends and teachers.

“We have appreciated his teachers so much. They have been a part of his team and really a part of our family.”

Adam, a member of the Washington High School junior varsity track team, captured national attention in 2016 when, during a cross-country race at Noelridge Park, he became distracted and veered from the course. Evan Hansen, a runner from Iowa City High, loped after him and guided him back to the track.

They ran the last mile together, the last two to cross the finish line.

That show of compassion and sportsmanship is what led to ABC News picking both of them as Persons of the Week.

In addition to Friday’s parade, Adam celebrated his birthday by taking his service dog, Turbo, on a run and trying to spot trains. He and his mom saw two.

“It was a good day,” Sara said.

Adam’s birthday cake, made by a family friend, was decorated with a train and a golden retriever that looks like Turbo.

“We were trying to think of a creative way we can help Adam have fun and celebrate him,” Sara said. “He deserves it.”

Comments: (319) 368-8664; grace.king@thegazette.com




dd

Members – EDD Integration

Introducing an add-on plugin for Members that integrates the Easy Digital Downloads plugin roles and capabilities.




dd

Auphonic Add-ons for Adobe Audition and Adobe Premiere

The new Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-ons for Adobe allows you to use the Auphonic Web Service directly within Adobe Audition and Adobe Premiere (Mac and Windows):

Audition Multitrack Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
The Auphonic Add-on can be embedded directly inside the Adobe user interface.


It is possible to export tracks/projects from Audition/Premiere and process them with the Auphonic audio post production algorithms (loudness, leveling, noise reduction - see Audio Examples), use our Encoding/Tagging, Chapter Marks, Speech Recognition and trigger Publishing with one click.
Furthermore, you can import the result file of an Auphonic Production into Audition/Premiere.


Download the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-ons for Adobe:

Auphonic Add-on for Adobe Audition

Audition Waveform Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
Metadata, Marker times and titles will be exported to Auphonic as well.

Export from Audition to Auphonic

You can upload the audio of your current active document (a Multitrack Session or a Single Audio File) to our Web Service.
In case of a Multitrack Session, a mixdown will be computed automatically to create a Singletrack Production in our Web Service.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to export the individual tracks in Audition, which could be used to create Multitrack Productions.

Metadata and Markers
All metadata (see tab Metadata in Audition) and markers (see tab Marker in Audition and the Waveform Editor Screenshot) will be exported to Auphonic as well.
Marker times and titles are used to create Chapter Marks (Enhanced Podcasts) in your Auphonic output files.
Auphonic Presets
You can optionally choose an Auphonic Preset to use previously stored settings for your production.
Start Production and Upload & Edit Buttons
Click Upload & Edit to upload your audio and create a new Production for further editing. After the upload, a web browser will be started to edit/adjust the production and start it manually.
Click Start Production to upload your audio, create a new Production and start it directly without further editing. A web browser will be started to see the results of your production.
Audio Compression
Uncompressed Multitrack Sessions or audio files in Audition (WAV, AIFF, RAW, etc.) will be compressed automatically with lossless codecs to speed up the upload time without a loss in audio quality.
FLAC is used as lossless codec on Windows and Mac OS (>= 10.13), older Mac OS systems (< 10.13) do not support FLAC and use ALAC instead.

Import Auphonic Productions in Audition

To import the result of an Auphonic Production into Audition, choose the corresponding production and click Import.
The result file will be downloaded from the Auphonic servers and can be used within Audition. If the production contains multiple Output File Formats, the output file with the highest bitrate (or uncompressed/lossless if available) will be chosen.

Auphonic Add-on for Adobe Premiere

Premiere Video Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
The Auphonic Add-on can be embedded directly inside the Adobe Premiere user interface.

Export from Premiere to Auphonic

You can upload the audio of your current Active Sequence in Premiere to our Web Service.

We will automatically create an audio-only mixdown of all enabled audio tracks in your current Active Sequence.
Video/Image tracks are ignored: no video will be rendered or uploaded to Auphonic!
If you want to export a specific audio track, please just mute the other tracks.

Start Production and Upload & Edit Buttons
Click Upload & Edit to upload your audio and create a new Production for further editing. After the upload, a web browser will be started to edit/adjust the production and start it manually.
Click Start Production to upload your audio, create a new Production and start it directly without further editing. A web browser will be started to see the results of your production.
Auphonic Presets
You can optionally choose an Auphonic Preset to use previously stored settings for your production.
Chapter Markers
Chapter Markers in Premiere (not all the other marker types!) will be exported to Auphonic as well and are used to create Chapter Marks (Enhanced Podcasts) in your Auphonic output files.
Audio Compression
The mixdown of your Active Sequence in Premiere will be compressed automatically with lossless codecs to speed up the upload time without a loss in audio quality.
FLAC is used as lossless codec on Windows and Mac OS (>= 10.13), older Mac OS systems (< 10.13) do not support FLAC and use ALAC instead.

Import Auphonic Productions in Premiere

To import the result of an Auphonic Production into Premiere, choose the corresponding production and click Import.
The result file will be downloaded from the Auphonic servers and can be used within Premiere. If the production contains multiple Output File Formats, the output file with the highest bitrate (or uncompressed/lossless if available) will be chosen.

Installation

Install our Add-ons for Audition and Premiere directly on the Adobe Add-ons website:

Auphonic Audio Post Production for Adobe Audition:
https://exchange.adobe.com/addons/products/20433

Auphonic Audio Post Production for Adobe Premiere:
https://exchange.adobe.com/addons/products/20429

The installation requires the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop application and might take a few minutes. Please also also try to restart Audition/Premiere if the installation does not work (on Windows it was once even necessary to restart the computer to trigger the installation).


After the installation, you can start our Add-ons directly in Audition/Premiere:
navigate to Window -> Extensions and click Auphonic Post Production.

Enjoy

Thanks a lot to Durin Gleaves and Charles Van Winkle from Adobe for their great support!

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback!







dd

Winter Stand Up Paddling on Horsetooth Reservoir

I love paddling on the Horsetooth Reservoir in cold season. Boat ramps are closed, no power boat traffic, usually quiet and calm. Snow and ice can enhance scenery. A great time to paddle, train, relax or photograph. The Horsetooth stays […]




dd

TrailBuddy: Using AI to Create a Predictive Trail Conditions App

Viget is full of outdoor enthusiasts and, of course, technologists. For this year's Pointless Weekend, we brought these passions together to build TrailBuddy. This app aims to solve that eternal question: Is my favorite trail dry so I can go hike/run/ride?

While getting muddy might rekindle fond childhood memories for some, exposing your gear to the elements isn’t great – it’s bad for your equipment and can cause long-term, and potentially expensive, damage to the trail.

There are some trail apps out there but we wanted one that would focus on current conditions. Currently, our favorites trail apps, like mtbproject.com, trailrunproject.com, and hikingproject.com -- all owned by REI, rely on user-reported conditions. While this can be effective, the reports are frequently unreliable, as condition reports can become outdated in just a few days.

Our goal was to solve this problem by building an app that brought together location, soil type, and weather history data to create on-demand condition predictions for any trail in the US.

We built an initial version of TrailBuddy by tapping into several readily-available APIs, then running the combined data through a machine learning algorithm. (Oh, and also by bringing together a bunch of smart and motivated people and combining them with pizza and some of the magic that is our Pointless Weekends. We'll share the other Pointless Project, Scurry, with you soon.)

The quest for data.

We knew from the start this app would require data from a number of sources. As previously mentioned, we used REI’s APIs (i.e. https://www.hikingproject.com/data) as the source for basic trail information. We used the trails’ latitude and longitude coordinates as well as its elevation to query weather and soil type. We also found data points such as a trail’s total distance to be relevant to our app users and decided to include that on the front-end, too. Since we wanted to go beyond relying solely on user-reported metrics, which is how REI’s current MTB project works, we came up with a list of factors that could affect the trail for that day.

First on that list was weather.

We not only considered the impacts of the current forecast, but we also looked at the previous day’s forecast. For example, it’s safe to assume that if it’s currently raining or had been raining over the last several days, it would likely lead to muddy and unfavorable conditions for that trail. We utilized the DarkSky API (https://darksky.net/dev) to get the weather forecasts for that day, as well as the records for previous days. This included expected information, like temperature and precipitation chance. It also included some interesting data points that we realized may be factors, like precipitation intensity, cloud cover, and UV index. 

But weather alone can’t predict how muddy or dry a trail will be. To determine that for sure, we also wanted to use soil data to help predict how well a trail’s unique soil composition recovers after precipitation. Similar amounts of rain on trails of very different soil types could lead to vastly different trail conditions. A more clay-based soil would hold water much longer, and therefore be much more unfavorable, than loamy soil. Finding a reliable source for soil type and soil drainage proved incredibly difficult. After many hours, we finally found a source through the USDA that we could use. As a side note—the USDA keeps track of lots of data points on soil information that’s actually pretty interesting! We can’t say we’re soil experts but, we felt like we got pretty close.

We used Whimsical to build our initial wireframes.

Putting our design hats on.

From the very first pitch for this app, TrailBuddy’s main differentiator to peer trail resources is its ability to surface real-time information, reliably, and simply. For as complicated as the technology needed to collect and interpret information, the front-end app design needed to be clean and unencumbered.

We thought about how users would naturally look for information when setting out to find a trail and what factors they’d think about when doing so. We posed questions like:

  • How easy or difficult of a trail are they looking for?
  • How long is this trail?
  • What does the trail look like?
  • How far away is the trail in relation to my location?
  • For what activity am I needing a trail for?
  • Is this a trail I’d want to come back to in the future?

By putting ourselves in our users’ shoes we quickly identified key features TrailBuddy needed to have to be relevant and useful. First, we needed filtering, so users could filter between difficulty and distance to narrow down their results to fit the activity level. Next, we needed a way to look up trails by activity type—mountain biking, hiking, and running are all types of activities REI’s MTB API tracks already so those made sense as a starting point. And lastly, we needed a way for the app to find trails based on your location; or at the very least the ability to find a trail within a certain distance of your current location.

We used Figma to design, prototype, and gather feedback on TrailBuddy.

Using machine learning to predict trail conditions.

As stated earlier, none of us are actual soil or data scientists. So, in order to achieve the real-time conditions reporting TrailBuddy promised, we’d decided to leverage machine learning to make predictions for us. Digging into the utility of machine learning was a first for all of us on this team. Luckily, there was an excellent tutorial that laid out the basics of building an ML model in Python. Provided a CSV file with inputs in the left columns, and the desired output on the right, the script we generated was able to test out multiple different model strategies, and output the effectiveness of each in predicting results, shown below.

We assembled all of the historical weather and soil data we could find for a given latitude/longitude coordinate, compiled a 1000 * 100 sized CSV, ran it through the Python evaluator, and found that the CART and SVM models consistently outranked the others in terms of predicting trail status. In other words, we found a working model for which to run our data through and get (hopefully) reliable predictions from. The next step was to figure out which data fields were actually critical in predicting the trail status. The more we could refine our data set, the faster and smarter our predictive model could become.

We pulled in some Ruby code to take the original (and quite massive) CSV, and output smaller versions to test with. Now again, we’re no data scientists here but, we were able to cull out a good majority of the data and still get a model that performed at 95% accuracy.

With our trained model in hand, we could serialize that to into a model.pkl file (pkl stands for “pickle”, as in we’ve “pickled” the model), move that file into our Rails app along with it a python script to deserialize it, pass in a dynamic set of data, and generate real-time predictions. At the end of the day, our model has a propensity to predict fantastic trail conditions (about 99% of the time in fact…). Just one of those optimistic machine learning models we guess.

Where we go from here.

It was clear that after two days, our team still wanted to do more. As a first refinement, we’d love to work more with our data set and ML model. Something that was quite surprising during the weekend was that we found we could remove all but two days worth of weather data, and all of the soil data we worked so hard to dig up, and still hit 95% accuracy. Which … doesn’t make a ton of sense. Perhaps the data we chose to predict trail conditions just isn’t a great empirical predictor of trail status. While these are questions too big to solve in just a single weekend, we'd love to spend more time digging into this in a future iteration.



  • News & Culture

dd

If You’re Using Beaver Builder Lite, You Need This Addon

Hey there, I’m Ben, and I’m a guest author here at WPZOOM. Today I thought I’d share with you my experience of one of their rather awesome plugins, an addon for Beaver Builder. I know the team at WPZOOM are big fans of Beaver Builder, why not? It’s a great page builder with an excellent feature set; chances are if […]




dd

TrailBuddy: Using AI to Create a Predictive Trail Conditions App

Viget is full of outdoor enthusiasts and, of course, technologists. For this year's Pointless Weekend, we brought these passions together to build TrailBuddy. This app aims to solve that eternal question: Is my favorite trail dry so I can go hike/run/ride?

While getting muddy might rekindle fond childhood memories for some, exposing your gear to the elements isn’t great – it’s bad for your equipment and can cause long-term, and potentially expensive, damage to the trail.

There are some trail apps out there but we wanted one that would focus on current conditions. Currently, our favorites trail apps, like mtbproject.com, trailrunproject.com, and hikingproject.com -- all owned by REI, rely on user-reported conditions. While this can be effective, the reports are frequently unreliable, as condition reports can become outdated in just a few days.

Our goal was to solve this problem by building an app that brought together location, soil type, and weather history data to create on-demand condition predictions for any trail in the US.

We built an initial version of TrailBuddy by tapping into several readily-available APIs, then running the combined data through a machine learning algorithm. (Oh, and also by bringing together a bunch of smart and motivated people and combining them with pizza and some of the magic that is our Pointless Weekends. We'll share the other Pointless Project, Scurry, with you soon.)

The quest for data.

We knew from the start this app would require data from a number of sources. As previously mentioned, we used REI’s APIs (i.e. https://www.hikingproject.com/data) as the source for basic trail information. We used the trails’ latitude and longitude coordinates as well as its elevation to query weather and soil type. We also found data points such as a trail’s total distance to be relevant to our app users and decided to include that on the front-end, too. Since we wanted to go beyond relying solely on user-reported metrics, which is how REI’s current MTB project works, we came up with a list of factors that could affect the trail for that day.

First on that list was weather.

We not only considered the impacts of the current forecast, but we also looked at the previous day’s forecast. For example, it’s safe to assume that if it’s currently raining or had been raining over the last several days, it would likely lead to muddy and unfavorable conditions for that trail. We utilized the DarkSky API (https://darksky.net/dev) to get the weather forecasts for that day, as well as the records for previous days. This included expected information, like temperature and precipitation chance. It also included some interesting data points that we realized may be factors, like precipitation intensity, cloud cover, and UV index. 

But weather alone can’t predict how muddy or dry a trail will be. To determine that for sure, we also wanted to use soil data to help predict how well a trail’s unique soil composition recovers after precipitation. Similar amounts of rain on trails of very different soil types could lead to vastly different trail conditions. A more clay-based soil would hold water much longer, and therefore be much more unfavorable, than loamy soil. Finding a reliable source for soil type and soil drainage proved incredibly difficult. After many hours, we finally found a source through the USDA that we could use. As a side note—the USDA keeps track of lots of data points on soil information that’s actually pretty interesting! We can’t say we’re soil experts but, we felt like we got pretty close.

We used Whimsical to build our initial wireframes.

Putting our design hats on.

From the very first pitch for this app, TrailBuddy’s main differentiator to peer trail resources is its ability to surface real-time information, reliably, and simply. For as complicated as the technology needed to collect and interpret information, the front-end app design needed to be clean and unencumbered.

We thought about how users would naturally look for information when setting out to find a trail and what factors they’d think about when doing so. We posed questions like:

  • How easy or difficult of a trail are they looking for?
  • How long is this trail?
  • What does the trail look like?
  • How far away is the trail in relation to my location?
  • For what activity am I needing a trail for?
  • Is this a trail I’d want to come back to in the future?

By putting ourselves in our users’ shoes we quickly identified key features TrailBuddy needed to have to be relevant and useful. First, we needed filtering, so users could filter between difficulty and distance to narrow down their results to fit the activity level. Next, we needed a way to look up trails by activity type—mountain biking, hiking, and running are all types of activities REI’s MTB API tracks already so those made sense as a starting point. And lastly, we needed a way for the app to find trails based on your location; or at the very least the ability to find a trail within a certain distance of your current location.

We used Figma to design, prototype, and gather feedback on TrailBuddy.

Using machine learning to predict trail conditions.

As stated earlier, none of us are actual soil or data scientists. So, in order to achieve the real-time conditions reporting TrailBuddy promised, we’d decided to leverage machine learning to make predictions for us. Digging into the utility of machine learning was a first for all of us on this team. Luckily, there was an excellent tutorial that laid out the basics of building an ML model in Python. Provided a CSV file with inputs in the left columns, and the desired output on the right, the script we generated was able to test out multiple different model strategies, and output the effectiveness of each in predicting results, shown below.

We assembled all of the historical weather and soil data we could find for a given latitude/longitude coordinate, compiled a 1000 * 100 sized CSV, ran it through the Python evaluator, and found that the CART and SVM models consistently outranked the others in terms of predicting trail status. In other words, we found a working model for which to run our data through and get (hopefully) reliable predictions from. The next step was to figure out which data fields were actually critical in predicting the trail status. The more we could refine our data set, the faster and smarter our predictive model could become.

We pulled in some Ruby code to take the original (and quite massive) CSV, and output smaller versions to test with. Now again, we’re no data scientists here but, we were able to cull out a good majority of the data and still get a model that performed at 95% accuracy.

With our trained model in hand, we could serialize that to into a model.pkl file (pkl stands for “pickle”, as in we’ve “pickled” the model), move that file into our Rails app along with it a python script to deserialize it, pass in a dynamic set of data, and generate real-time predictions. At the end of the day, our model has a propensity to predict fantastic trail conditions (about 99% of the time in fact…). Just one of those optimistic machine learning models we guess.

Where we go from here.

It was clear that after two days, our team still wanted to do more. As a first refinement, we’d love to work more with our data set and ML model. Something that was quite surprising during the weekend was that we found we could remove all but two days worth of weather data, and all of the soil data we worked so hard to dig up, and still hit 95% accuracy. Which … doesn’t make a ton of sense. Perhaps the data we chose to predict trail conditions just isn’t a great empirical predictor of trail status. While these are questions too big to solve in just a single weekend, we'd love to spend more time digging into this in a future iteration.



  • News & Culture

dd

Adding Block Patterns to Your Theme

Block patterns are unique, predefined combinations of blocks you can use and tweak to create stunningly designed sections of your website.




dd

Add New Effects to Your Design Work with This Creative Toolkit

This brand new All-Encompassing Creative Toolkit contains a variety of resources that take the hard work out of creating stunning visual effects. From ready-made assets you can copy/paste into your artwork to pro-grade tools that provide the building blocks you need to create original designs, these resources make it possible to create work in totally […]

The post Add New Effects to Your Design Work with This Creative Toolkit appeared first on Spoon Graphics.