Today it was the first warm day here in town, and we got a whopping 27 degrees! So, I took the opportunity to go out, and map many pubs, shops, salons, etc. in Quebec City. Mapped were Avenue Cartier, Grande Allee eastward towards the parliament, and Boulevard Rene-Levesque towards the theatre.

Tomorrow the weather forecast is terrible compared to today: almost a near-freezing 10 degrees... So, then it would be better to spend the day indoors, and adding all the stuff to the map.

For those who are not familiar with the Quebec climate, it's kinda strange to have such warm temperatures, people in shorts and short sleeves, while the trees are (nearly) bare, and there are still several patches of snow melting.

Today was a good day to do some PoI mapping in Rue St-Jean and Chemin Sainte-Foy. It was a balmy -5 degrees Celsius, and only some light flurries were falling. Tip for myself: I need a pencil to write, and better gloves to write with. The result is that my note book is not very legible. After a while I went to a shop to get a better pen. Unfortunately they were out of stock (probably forgotten to be ordered), so I got the cashier's pen for free. It's not big, but it made me feel good that there are people out there others in dire need :)

One question: how should I deal with shops which have some eating areas? There were quite a few of them. I didn't map them (thinking that shops weren't that interesting). Tagging them both as restaurant and shop goes too far.

While exploring the Map features page on the Wiki, I noticed that someone definitely raised the bar for PoI mapping: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dbench

This is my first diary entry, although I'm already mapping for quite a while. The map of Quebec City and its surroundings made a lot of progress last summer. It's no longer the white spot it used to be :) At the moment I'm drawing roads in JOSM in the Charlesbourg area, so they should show up soon. This Thanksgiving weekend I hope to be able to finish the secondary roads on the south shore with a few trips (east of 55 / 161, the rest is for my big friend Yves in Sherbrooke). The south shore is beautiful with all the maples bearing wonderful colours! Hopefully the much narrower north shore will be done before winter kicks in.