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Automagical Driving Directions
As I alluded to the other day NoBMoB now has the ability to generate you automatic driving directions to each ride's meeting place. Kindof handy if you are a newbie to the ride, haven't been there for a while, or just have a terrible memory.
Of course to do this, it needs to know where you want to start from, presumably this will be your home, but maybe some place else like work, your riding buddy's place, etc.
Either way, to take advantage of this, goto your profile (or click the "my account" link on the left there) and edit it. Under the "Who you are" sub-tab there's a field, "Directions Starting Address"... fill it in away you go. If the ride database authors have been doing there job there should now be links to a plain old map and also directions under the "Meeting Point" field.
This is using Google Maps (so be sure it understands the address you enter), which can be a bit flakey right now - see the bad example 
- but I'm sure they are working on it as I write!
Domain Name Problems
Oh dear! Someone who shall remain nameless forgot to renew our domain and let it lapse... doh!
Apparently it's renewed now, but as a result there'll be intermittent problems with the site for the next 1-2 days while the various servers and caches and the like about the Internet get the new details.
Apologies, but he who shall remain nameless will surely be feeling a bit silly but won't mind being teased about this at all for the next year or so 
Site Upgrade Complete
I'm sure diligent users will have noticed - but the software running NoBMoB was upgraded this morning. Hope all is running well - please PM me if you spot anything weird going on - erm... think I check PMs are working
The only side effect should be that e-mail notifications are turned off right now. Not many people have been using that because the control is a bit coarse. Hopefully we'll fix that soon and have some better options for e-mail notifications.
Update: New e-mail notification system is now running...
Blogs
In case anyone didn't know, we're currently preparing the site for an upgrade to the latest version of the CMS. Watch out for 'funnies' in the coming week or so (or whenever this happens).
This is being done in part to give more functionality. I did notice during this process though, that personal Blogs are supported in the current version so have enabled them. I'm sure someone will find this useful if they've ever wanted to keep a MTB (or other I guess) journal. There should be a 'my blog' entry in the left navigation for you to view and make entries in. As this is a user's own personal thing, no moderation here!
We'll see how this goes, perhaps the moderators will take to promoting some of the more interesting stuff to the front page?
Enjoy!
NoBMoB - 1st anniversary of the new site
This Wednesday, we celebrate the first anniversary of the new and improved NoBMoB site. What a year - this site has grown immensely and is truly starting to hit it's strides as a community forum for mountain bike riding in Northern Sydney.
- We now have over 500km of mapped trails.
- Every weekend recently there have been at least three rides co-ordinated via this site
- 5-10 new users are signing up every week, and many are becoming active members of the community, organising rides, trail maps and suggestions etc.
Many thanks to Robin for the immense effort he has put in to get the site to where it is today.
So this weekend, we will hold another beginners / lurkers ride - see if we can convince those folks that are signed up but haven't gotten motivated to go for a ride to get out there.
More details later this week.
Marramarra National Park Added
Did everyone read the amusing write up on Marramarra National Park from last weekend (linked from the forum)?
Our own write up (hit the NP link above) appeared a few days later, well worth a visit I'd say. The park that is, not the write up - although the write up is OK - but then again, I would say that wouldn't I?
Site Outage - Sorry
Appologies, but the NoBMoB.com was out for quiet some time (17:44 to 00:21) Sunday evening.
Ahem, yes - blame iiNet (or partly Pipe Networks) - outage details here.
438km
Some of you might have noticed I've been busy messing about with maps and stuff. Chilling out this arvo I thought it would be fun to calculate the length of trails in the maps on NoBMoB (yeah, I know... sick!). Anyhow, didn't take that long so we're pleased to announce the total is...
Drum roll...
438Km of mapped trails!
Wow - not a bad effort at all... hope you're all enjoying them :)
There's the full break down of the distances in the rest of this article (hit 'Read more' if you haven't already).
PM'ing and More KMZ
Something stuck me lately, and that was how users on our site can't talk to each other directly. Doh! So voila, we introduce PM'ing (aka. private messaging - send another user a message via NoBMoB). Also, if you'd like to make your e-mail address visible to other users there is now a 'Public E-mail' field on your profile. This information is only shown to logged in users and should therefore be safe from spambots.
The KMZ (aka. Keyhole or Google Earth) files are coming along nicely, Red Hill (example below) and Towlers Bay are the latest two:
These are going so nicely in fact that they have been split up. You should now notice links on the pages in our rides database to individual files for each. However, the NoBMoB master KMZ contains links that pull all the others in automatically for your enjoyment.
Paths coming...
Someone's been busy with Google Earth. A few paths have been added and am sure there's more on the way.
Oxford Falls for example (click to enlarge):
Actually, Oxford Falls is a good example for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I'm not too sure on the names of half these trails - please post a comment with your corrections ;)
Anyhow, download the full file here: NoBMoB KMZ. Google Earth is now also available for the Mac apparently, but for those without this great app. there supposedly is a way to get this info to appear in your browser with Google Maps. Might play with that later... any requests?