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Lake Angeles | July 24, 2021 | Olympic National Park

Richard Fagan • June 29, 2021

7.2 Mile Hike from the park's trail head start - 2,300 ft elevation gain.

It's a 3.6 mile hike if you start from the trail head located near the Heart o' the Hills parkway, but this time we started from the trail head at the end of Mt. Angeles Road. This added another 1.8 miles (each way) to our hike. This wasn't the first time we hiked up to Lake Angeles. The previous time was May 12th. That time, the snow level was right at lake level. Quite a different view that day!

The hike is mostly through forest, but there are lots of  views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on a clear day. Notible on this hike are the wooden bridges across streams.... Sorry, I had to throw in the oddball tree photo.

Google Indexing Explained
By Richard Fagan September 2, 2024
The Google Index process refers to how Google collects, organizes, and stores information from web pages to make it accessible through search results. The purpose of this process is to enable Google Search to quickly retrieve relevant information in response to user queries. The process involves several key steps: 1. Crawling Definition: Google uses automated bots called "Googlebots" to discover new or updated web pages by following links on the web. Purpose: To find as much content as possible, ensuring the search index remains comprehensive and up-to-date. How it works: Googlebot begins with a list of known URLs (from previous crawls or sitemaps) and discovers new pages by following links from these. 2. Rendering Definition: After crawling, Google processes the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other elements to see how the page would appear to a typical user. Purpose: To understand the layout, design, and content as users would experience it. How it works: Google uses headless browsers (like Chrome) to simulate how the page renders, ensuring it can read dynamic or JavaScript-generated content. 3. Indexing Definition: Google analyzes the content and structure of crawled pages and organizes the data for storage in its massive index. Purpose: To make content searchable by categorizing it based on topics, keywords, and other signals. What Google stores: Text content Meta tags (e.g., titles, descriptions) Structured data (e.g., schema markup) Images and videos (if applicable) 4. Ranking Definition: When a user searches, Google retrieves information from its index and ranks results based on relevance and quality. Purpose: To deliver the most accurate and helpful answers to users. Factors considered: Keywords in the content Page quality and authority User experience metrics (e.g., page speed, mobile-friendliness) Backlinks and site reputation Purpose of the Google Index Efficiency: By pre-organizing data, Google can retrieve results almost instantly when a query is made. Relevance: The index helps ensure that users get the most pertinent results based on their search intent. Scalability: The index allows Google to handle billions of searches daily across an enormous volume of web content. The Google Index process is essential for organizing the internet’s vast amount of information, making it searchable, and ensuring users find relevant, high-quality results efficiently.
By Richard Fagan May 24, 2024
Maximize Your Website Traffic: Leveraging LinkedIn's Professional Network for Optimal Results
By Richard Fagan April 26, 2024
Modern web design has undergone significant transformations in recent years, with several key changes reshaping the digital landscape. These changes reflect evolving user expectations, technological advancements, and design trends. Here are some of the biggest design changes in modern web design: Responsive Design: One of the most significant shifts has been towards responsive design. With the proliferation of mobile devices, websites must adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes and resolutions. Responsive design ensures optimal viewing experiences across desktops, tablets, and smartphones, improving accessibility and user engagement. Minimalist Aesthetics: Clean, minimalist design has become increasingly popular. This approach emphasizes simplicity, with a focus on clear typography, ample white space, and minimalist navigation menus. Minimalist aesthetics enhance user focus, readability, and visual appeal while reducing clutter and distractions. Typography Emphasis: Typography plays a crucial role in modern web design. Designers are experimenting with bold, expressive typography to create memorable brand identities and enhance content hierarchy. Custom fonts, variable fonts, and creative typography treatments are gaining traction, adding personality and character to websites. Microinteractions: Microinteractions are subtle, interactive elements that enhance user experience and engagement. From hover animations and button feedback to scroll-triggered effects, microinteractions add depth and interactivity, making websites more intuitive and enjoyable to navigate. Accessibility Focus: Designers are placing greater emphasis on accessibility, ensuring that websites are inclusive and user-friendly for people with disabilities. This includes implementing accessible color contrasts, keyboard navigation support, screen reader compatibility, and other accessibility best practices to improve usability for all users. Illustrations and Animations: Visual storytelling through illustrations and animations has gained momentum in modern web design. Custom illustrations and animated graphics add personality, convey brand messages, and create immersive experiences that captivate and engage users. Scroll-based Navigation: Long-scrolling websites with scroll-based navigation have become prevalent, offering seamless transitions between sections and enhancing storytelling capabilities. Scroll-triggered animations, parallax effects, and fixed headers optimize the scrolling experience, making content more engaging and interactive. Video Backgrounds: Incorporating video backgrounds has become a popular design trend, adding dynamic visual elements that capture attention and convey brand narratives effectively. Video backgrounds can create immersive experiences, set the tone for websites, and increase user engagement. User-Centric Design: Overall, modern web design is increasingly focused on user-centric principles. Designers prioritize user experience (UX) research, usability testing, and iterative design processes to create intuitive, enjoyable, and meaningful digital experiences that resonate with users and drive results. These design changes reflect the dynamic nature of web design, driven by technological innovation, user behavior trends, and evolving design aesthetics. Embracing these trends and best practices can help designers create impactful and user-friendly websites in today's digital landscape.
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