There’s going to be a good old London OpenStreetMap pub meet-up TONIGHT at the Monkey Puzzle in Paddington.

When was the last time I wrote a diary entry about London event happenings? A couple of months ago! The Baker Street mapping party. And I still haven’t input the data from that one! What can I say? Things have been busy. I’ve been busy at work. Lots of transportAPI shenanigans, including moving office to Euston. And busy at home. It turns out getting a new carpet involves moving… everything. But I’ve been busy with quite a bit of OpenStreetMap stuff too:

• Pub meet-up Artillery Arms Bunhill fields
• Introduced HOT project ideas to UCL students
• Gave HOT talk at Start Network
• Mapping party around Hoxton Square
• Gave talk about UAVs & HOT’s OpenAerialMap project
• Mapping party in Brixton
• HOT meet-up at the ODI
• Gave a talk to people at Exprodat
• Geomob last week

In amongst all of that I’ve been trying to keep up with some Communication Working Group things and trying to organise meetings to get some new people to help. Pheweeee. Lots going on. The biggest thing on the OpenStreetMap calendar recently, SOTM EU, I missed because it clashed with my wife’s birthday, but… well I have not been feeling deprived of OpenStreetMap events!

The other day at geomob I was reminded of my last diary entry by the guy behind what3words… I don’t think he was too annoyed with me.

Shall I try to catch up on diary entries? Well I have notes for all these things, so I feel like I should really, but it’s a lot to catch up on. Let’s make a start.

So way back at the Artillery Arms pub meet-up (end of May!) I’ve just found my notes. Dan was scribbling on them as he showed us how to find the most remote branch of Starbucks in the UK using delaunay triangulation (and OpenStreetMap data)

Intially we were having some beers while looking out onto the bunhill fields cemetery (or is it a graveyard) and wondered whether all the famous people’s gravestones had been mapped. Turns out not! Maybe we should’ve mapped them, but this was a lazy pub meet-up.

We had an appearance from Ed Freyfogle with his baby! We also had an appearance from a radio journalist who was scoping things out for an interview/recording, which he did later at the Hoxton Square meet-up… but more on that later.

We talked about Notes. Someone suggested a routing system which brings you to your destination via some nearby notes! Quite a fun idea. I think there’s more “low hanging fruit” ideas around a more basic (highly specialised and simple) notes app, for viewing/adding notes on the move. In fact that’s on my list of hacks I would do if I could only get around to them.

In fact me and Matt solved a note on the way home. Solving notes is so easy you can do it while under the influence of alcohol!

Maybe we’ll do a bit of that again tonight, as we head to the pub again. If you’d like to join in with such activities (and pub conversations) we’ll be in the Monkey Puzzle, Paddington from 7pm. All the details on the London page