Richard's diary
Recent diary entries:
No longer a test diary postThis post used to say 'test post thing', but now it says 'you can edit your diary entries now'. :)
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Thu Aug 21 21:42:41 +0100 2008
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Wow
Astonishing progress on the cycle map recently - I see route 41 has arrived east of Warwick, a bunch of stuff around the South Coast, some new routes in Scotland, loads of regional routes in Cheshire, and no doubt a load more I've not spotted. I've added NCN52 north of Nuneaton and the proposed route of NCN46 between Ledbury and Hereford. Good weather + long evenings = cycle mapping, clearly.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Thu Jul 03 11:23:02 +0100 2008
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NCN6 and NCN52
Took advantage of the wonderful weather and long evenings by going for a ride from Burton out to Ashby, Coalville and Loughborough - taking in as much of NCN52 and NCN6 as I could.
NCN52 is now done from the village of Heather to its northern terminus. NCN6 now has a continuous route from Foxton (near Market Harborough), through Leicester, Loughborough, and Derby, to Nottingham- bar a few hundred yards in Blaby (southern Leicester). Some lovely cycling, too - though the route through Coalville is definitely incomplete: a lonely Sustrans milepost stands in the town centre by an impressive bridge over a (barely used) railway, but there's no signposted route either side!
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Thu Jun 26 01:33:00 +0100 2008
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Finally
...got round to mapping the footpath around the back of our house.
It's not like we've lived here for eight years, and I've been involved in OSM for three-and-a-half, or anything like that.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sun Jun 22 21:42:03 +0100 2008
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Happy birthday Potlatch
One year old yesterday... seems like at least ten. Your mileage may vary whether this is a cause for celebration or commiseration, but I've enjoyed writing it, so far!
Posted by Richard at Mon May 19 16:14:06 +0100 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 7 comments
Beautiful Burton
Two comments from an hour-and-a-half's mapping this balmy May evening:
"'Scuse me! 'Scuse me!" - angelic little cherub.
"Hello?" - me.
"He" (pointing to second angelic little cherub) "says my ass is really fat. Is it?"
"Errrrrrr"
(On railway phone) "Oh, hi, yeah, this is the duty crossing keeper at Clay Mills. Hi. We've had a suicidal male reported. No, I've not seen him anywhere. I've got two police trapped the other side of the crossing. No, no sign of him. It was his family phoned up, said he might be heading this way. Ok, well I reckon we just lift the restriction."
Ah, Burton. There's nowhere like it. Apart from perhaps a big steaming pile of shit next to a river somewhere.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Wed May 07 00:32:43 +0100 2008
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Pennine Cycleway
Just got back from cycling NCN 68 - the Pennine Cycleway from Derby to Berwick-on-Tweed. Best Sustrans route I've ever done, bar none. And with eight days at one trackpoint every other second, there's a lot of mapping to do...
Posted by Richard at Mon Apr 21 12:04:33 +0100 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 1 comment
Birmingham mapping party
Quite a productive morning (after I eventually found the cafe!)... but then I lost half my notes, so had to retrace my steps in the afternoon. And by then it was time to go and catch the train home. Gah.
Still, for the benefit of anyone else sniffing around the same area, I've done the area I signed up for on the board (39), and a bit of the one to the south: the Rea Valley Drive estate, the Wychall Farm estate, the Fairway and the roads off it, and connected it back to the A441.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sat Apr 12 21:23:03 +0100 2008
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Garmin cycle map
I've updated the Garmin cycle map script to cope with relations, and be a bit less fussy about the XML in planet.osm. It's in svn as usual.
You can now also download a prebuilt UK-only cycle map if you don't want to faff around with building your own.
More here.
Posted by Richard at Mon Apr 07 10:45:34 +0100 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 1 comment
Two more NCN routes
In preparation for Long Bike Ride starting a week on Sunday, I did a hilly fifty-something mile stint on the NCN today - from Chepstow to Abergavenny on route 42, then on to Hereford on route 46.
Great fun even though I was utterly, utterly exhausted by the end of it and my legs still haven't recovered. Granny gear was engaged as early as the climb out of Chepstow, and Route 46 in particular is one for the "hills mean picturesque!" brigade (as opposed to "hills mean pain!"). I especially liked the extremely narrow road around Skirrid Fawr (it didn't quite get to the top, but felt like it) where, at one point, I had to 'reverse' to let an agricultural truck past - the road was that narrow. Of course, it helped that I was then rewarded with a lovely smile and a twinkly wave from the young female blonde ruddy-cheeked Welsh hill farmer who was driving said truck.
I was, however, a little miffed to find that all my effort to get to Hereford station for 5.50 (I think I made 5.48) was rewarded by a crap uncomfortable train with no buffet that was scheduled to wait at Shrub Hill for 15 minutes and Moreton-in-Marsh for 25. I mean, it could at least stop somewhere where there are shops. Or a takeaway.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sat Apr 05 23:39:53 +0100 2008
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Getting used to relations
I've started to use route relations for non-NCN cycle routes, such as the National Byway, and the Four Castles Cycle Route near Abergavenny. The concept fits really well. Just need to add a bit of Potlatch code to search for relations by name that aren't nearby...
Posted by Richard at Fri Apr 04 17:48:09 +0100 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 2 comments
Potlatch blog
I've opened a new blog specifically for Potlatch tips, tricks, news and development insights (ha).
Find it at potlatchosm.wordpress.com.
Posted by Richard at Fri Mar 21 20:29:09 +0000 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 0 comments
Here's mud in your eye
I'm used to getting puzzled looks while mapping, but perhaps none more so than today, when there were several stares of utter bafflement as we drove down the A361 in the Pluriel, with the roof open, with two bikes sticking out the top. In the rain.
After a few days of "shall we / shan't we" as the weather forecast remained resolutely crap, we decided to say "sod it" and cycled NCN 45 from Swindon to Kemble. It's a really nice route, sort of.
There was one forest of pedestrian crossings over the Swindon bypass (Thamesdown Drive, I think) where the signs were unclear and we ended up cycling down a very muddy path then retracing our steps; then the short bit alongside Thamesdown Drive itself was particularly uninspiring, to the point where Anna yelled over at me "Sustrans really ought to get a clue"... just one second before we turned a corner to find a magnificent new cycle bridge over the road, with a swooping, smooth tarmac path down the other side.
The railway path from Cricklade was interesting, in that when they said "this route goes through the Cotswold Water Park" I didn't realise they meant it literally. The puddles were enormous, and enormously muddy - the bikes needed re-WD40ing every five minutes. I suspect it's not always been like that, but today's lousy weather coupled with last year's flood damage made for pretty crap conditions.
Despite that, and the rain, the ride itself was generally really enjoyable: fairly gentle, a couple of startling sights (like an infilled Thames & Severn Canal lock and cottage), and an interesting chance conversation with the chairman of Cricklade's chamber of commerce about the benefits that cycle tourism has brought to his town. And best of all, it ended at a really friendly pub next to Kemble railway station, where a pint of Stowford Press (me) and Arkells 2B (Anna) were the perfect accompaniment to watching Wales beat France at rugby as we waited for the train home.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sat Mar 15 23:03:53 +0000 2008
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Potlatch non-progress report
I'm rewriting the tag editing code in Potlatch to be a bit more reliable at the moment... and it's taking longer than expected. So, sorry for the lack of updates. 0.8 will be along as soon as I can finish it...
Posted by Richard at Tue Mar 11 23:05:19 +0000 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 0 comments
Chipping Norton finished
Well, almost - a couple of tiny roads in West End (out from the main town) aren't done. But everything else is. Coupled with messpert's amazing work in Witney and the usual suspects around Woodstock et al, West Oxfordshire could be complete before too long...
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Mon Mar 10 14:28:03 +0000 2008
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Worcester
Yesterday, Steve Chilton, Tom Higgy and I met up for a quick mapping blast around Worcester - one of the few cities in England to have very little OSM coverage.
I tackled the area west of the river, where I'd previously done an afternoon's mapping. It's now mostly complete save for the St John's and Rushwick areas. (Steve worked on the Barbourne area and Tom on the Diglis area, I think.)
And Steve managed to find a table under an out-of-copyright map in the Plough!
Still lots to do in the city, and I'll certainly return to finish off the west side at least, but it's now in a much healthier state than it was before the weekend.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sun Feb 24 17:43:30 +0000 2008
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Work in progress
It's now 3.19am and I can't let the last two nights' effort go without showing something of what I've been working on...
There's huge amounts of code tidying to do, plus calibration for every single sheet, before I can get England and Wales complete and ready to upload. And even this is only on one zoom level (14). But it all gets easier from now on!
Posted by Richard at Thu Feb 14 03:22:07 +0000 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 4 comments
Background layers in Potlatch
You can now choose from several background layers in Potlatch.
Go to the options window (the little "tick" near the bottom left), and you'll see that the pop-up menu which used to offer only 'Yahoo' and 'None' now offers:
- OpenAerialMap
- Yahoo
- Mapnik
- Osmarender
- Maplint
OpenAerialMap is likely to be particularly useful. Not just because it's a great project in itself, but also because it uses the same low-res Landsat imagery as Yahoo - but enlarges it when you zoom in. So if you want to trace over enlarged Landsat, use this to replace the old Flash Player zoom.
(If anyone else has spherical Mercator GMaps-like tilesets that might work as a background image, let me know.)
Thanks to Christopher and Jon for configuring their servers (OAM/tah and tile respectively) so Potlatch can do this.
And for just one example of how it looks, go to http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit.html?zoom=16&lat=49.795&lon=15.445 and select OpenAerialMap!
Posted by Richard at Tue Feb 12 10:02:25 +0000 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 0 comments
New Potlatch!
0.7 is now live (thanks Tom) and has just one big improvement: it now fills your browser window.
So please be nice to the server and don't go full-screen at 2048x1024 on zoom level 12 in London!
One of the good things about this is that the greater screen space should give room for more funky things in the future (e.g. some form of online help). Coping with the Yahoo API has, of course, proved interesting. I think it's mostly there (and I've removed the really really hackish way that Potlatch used to communicate with it), but let me know of any difficulties.
Posted by Richard at Sun Feb 03 23:30:22 +0000 2008Comment on this entry | Reply to this entry | 1 comment
Chipping Norton
Anna and I took a stab at mapping "Chippy" today, which was pretty much terra incognita away from the main roads. It's looking a lot better already, and perhaps more importantly, it helps to expand the "complete coverage" belt centred around Oxford - Woodstock, Charlbury etc. are all finished, and Witney appears to be coming on in leaps and bounds.
Coordinates:Posted by Richard at Sat Feb 02 22:06:14 +0000 2008
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