Heyla from NOLA!

[Marilynx]

Greeting from New Orleans, LA, USA.

Long time afficianado of maps -- my father was a geologist, so I grew up with them, and remember being shocked in fifth grade that there were kids in my class who didn't understand the concept of "City/ town/ county/ state/ country. I also almost flunked geography because I kept correcting the teacher.

I was a member here some years ago, but then got tied up in non-computer stuff, and apparently, my membership was removed at some point as being inactive.

Currently, most of my mapping involves creating Barn Hunt courses.

Barn Hunt is a dog sport based on the traditional role of canines as vermin hunters on farms. A course is created of straw bales (in my area, 14" x 18" x 36") up to three bales high. The level my Harper Longhair Dachshund participates in is the Master level. His courses are 24' x 24', and have 2 area which are three bales high, and an 18'-?' long pitch dark Tunnel, which is 18" x 18". Eight safety tubes are placed on the course, with 1-5 having real rats (rats are NOT harmed! I train rats to train dogs) and the remainder having used rat litter in them so the dog must distinguish between a rat and a rat's nest. The dog has 4.5 minutes to search the enclosure (handler cannot touch him during the search), find however many rats there are, indicate them to the handler, do the Tunnel and a Climb (completely off the floor), and then indicate to the handler, "I found them all!" and the handler must call "Clear!" Harper is the first Standard Dachshund in the US and Canada to achieve the Master Barn Hunt Champion X4 title.

I teach Barn Hunt classes, but don't have huge area to put courses on. So I fit all the levels of Tunnels (Novice, Open, Senior, Master) onto one 20' x 20' course.

The program I use is a free program called Paint Dot Net. It has most of the features of PhotoShop, but is much easier to learn (IMO) than GIMP. I've tried GIMP, and it just about drove me crazy.

I also do maps of planets, local estates and/or towns for my writing. That's what I need to learn more about.

My understanding of the Forum software doesn't let me upload multiple .jpgs so I am simply showing a finished map. I usually print it as the base layer (orange, striped bales indicate those on edge) the boards layer (pale purple), the second layer (blue), and the third layer (green). The squiggly stuff is loose straw around and under various bales for the hiding of safety tubes.


2020-08_Level01t.JPG
2020-08_Level01tBoards.JPG
2020-08_Level02t.JPG
2020-08_Level03t.JPG
2020-08_Level03t-a.JPG