Websites

A new page regarding websites of interest has been added.

Authors, please add to it as you come across new and worthwhile sites.

April 10, 2007 By Babar

April 2007 Agenda

Babar Ali- I’ll be revising the current route a little bit, as well as recruiting some academics to give feedback on the route and possibly tag along for the expedition.

KM.Ali- (Planning and Recruiting)- Working to recruit a Chinese national to assist with the whole diplomacy aspect of things.

Abid Omar- (Public Relations and Research) - Draft Letter that will be sent to sponsors when things shape up a bit more, also please compile a list of potential sponsors. (I’ll send you what I have done regarding this so far). Also, an initial Press Release document to show that things are under way.

Khalid Omar- (Equipment and Logistics) - Based on the current route, what are the expected needs (equipment-wise), and ball-park figure on costs. I think you can probably pull some of the old stuff off of the original wiki and repost it on this site.

Mahera Omar- (Media and Documentary) - Any newspaper or journalistic contacts we can start working on? Also please research what filming, photography, and other general media equipment will be needed.

Hamid Omar- (Planning and Logistics)- Work with KO on logistics, and any additional feedback regarding route and general direction/theme of trip to me.

Azam Jaffar- (Logistics and Planning)- Preliminary route/plan through the Pakistan portion of the trip, including destinations, stops, and sights.

April 7, 2007 By Babar

Team Page Update

Team page has now been updated to show individual areas of responsibilities.

By Babar

New Theme for the Website

Just switched over and tweaked this new theme for the website. It’s called the:

123RedBlack 1.0 by Edwin Boiten

Let me know how you guys like it. The website is now also using the logo for the expedition.

By Babar

Project Plan Timeline

After experimenting with several Project Management tools and programs, I settled on xTime Project to construct and manage the planning of this trip. It has a nice and simple user interface with a minimal learning curve. Other programs I tried were OmniPlan and Microsoft Project 2007.

It has a feature which allowed me to export to all different formats. Here is the PDF file of the project time-line: Expedition Prep Project.

April 3, 2007 By Babar

Mapping out the trip

Based off of the 1978 trip that was originally planned, I used Google Earth and plotted out the route we will be taking. I placed markers on all of the stops we will be making, and measured straight-line distances to see what the total trip would be.

It comes out to 4,550 miles, or 7,322 kilometers. Given that this is a very rough straight-line plot, it is safe to estimate that the final distance will be close to 6000 miles.

I will post the trip route on a different page, with images and a listing of the cities involved.

ROUTE MAP HERE:

I was initially dreading plotting out the whole trip, but was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was using Google Earth. I’ve never really used the program extensively before- only ever for 5 minutes at a time to look at a picture of my house maybe. The best part I found were the pictures that are linked right into the map. It also links relevant information to Wikipedia which pops up for some places that have some importance (historic, political, geographic, etc.).

Where it could use improvement was in more easily plotting out the route. Some markers got saved in one category, and others in another. It was a pain to go back and re-mark a lot of the places, but once I got the hang of it, it worked just fine. Another feature that would be good would be to have the program automatically track distances and the entire length of the route. I had to use other tools to get that part done, and it’s something that I think could easily be added in. The “add path” feature still baffles me. I tried fooling around with it for 5-10 mins and all it did was screw other things up, so i finally gave up on it.

Overall, it did get me more excited about the planning stages of the trip, and I encourage all to go on there and check out the various pictures of the areas we have plotted out.

April 2, 2007 By Babar

Logo Design

Here’s a logo I designed today with 3 different variations and colors. Let me know what you guys think.

By Babar

Official website is now up!

This is now the official website for the Silk-Route Expedition 2008. This blog will have multiple authors and will be a journal of planning for the trip.

March 2, 2007 By Babar

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

March 1, 2007 By Babar