Had a big clear-out of old paperwork today and realised a lot of bills/receipts have address info on them, so I have been making use of them before being thrown away to add a load of addr: tags to places on the map or adding new ones. Tagging the resource as source=local_knowledge. Never cross my mind to do this before

Yesterday I was out by Cliffe Fort walking along the Saxon Shore Way with my Garmin for a GPS trace. I noticed that on the Garmin display it showed that I was well into the River Thames at some points along the way, so I would not be too confident about the accuracy of the map that comes with the Garmin Vista where coastline is concerned. This not the first time this has happened. All was well when I uploaded the trace to OSM, ie. I was on land most of the time!

The Saxon Shore Way path seems to be under attack from coastal/river erosion in this area so I am not sure how long this path will last into the future. Added a few more kilometers to the LDP (relation 8864), only another 200 km to go!!!!

I was doing an update earlier in potlatch and it was taking for ever to respond, however I noticed later in the changesets that a bot was running at the time, I thinking bots should be run over night when it's quite, then I realised where the bot is maybe night time, oh well, perhaps bots should pace themselves in some way so not to overload the system

Just got through my first set of batteries on my new toy. I must admit they lasted longer than I thought. I think this is due to the display being pretty clear in all sorts of light conditions and I hardly need to use the backlight function, a lot less than I thought I would when I first got the unit.

My only gripe with it is when I try to enter a waypoint where you press and hold the rocker key on the front of the unit, it does not always register, so you have to have several goes at it. Perhaps its just me with my big fingers and thumbs!

Been GPS tracing/mapping a lots "paths" in my area. This can get a bit confusing at times both in terms of 1. Paths not being signed/waymarked very well, farmers ploughing up footpaths and sign vandalism don't help. 2. Can't decide the best way to tag paths at the moment. I know that there 2 schools of thought on this, but both seem to have merit depending on your perception of things.

Added roads which no other map shows because they so new. Just shows the power of OSM!

I was out today GPS tracing some paths trying out my new Garmin Vista, when I came across a herd of cows across the path which had a ditch both sides and the cows weren't going to move! Comeback another day I suppose. Anybody else had odd things stop you mapping?

Just recently got hold of a Garmin Etrex Vista HCx. seems to work OK just need to get use to it. I suspect it will eat batteries, so rechargeables are on the shopping list along with a microsd chip. Have done footpath traces around Cliffe/Cliffe Woods area which came out ok. Had to update the mapsource s/w twice to bring it up to date (ver 6.16.2) would have thought it would have gone to the latest version in one go.

Time does fly!

Its been some two years since my last upload of GPS data. Nice to see OSM is maturing with more info and better features.

Not been on OSM for some time

Like the development that has taken place on potlatch lot more user friendly

Updated some features in my local area like BT taking phone boxes away!!

Some of the areas have been mapped out remotely using satellite views, however on the ground things are somewhat different. Having done a walk around Gravesend today, quite a few road have missed, roads put in where there are none. The main problem is that shadows on the image causes errors to made.

Seems a shame that someone has taken a lot of time and effort to map out ways from
an image, only for then someone, me in this particular case, to rework lots of areas.

Another problem I have noticed is that the some of the imagery is quite old, some
I have seen is at least two years out of date.

So take care when using satellite views for mapping, try to use other sources as well if that is at all possible.

So its nearly 6 weeks since I started mapping. Time certainly flys while doing this surveying job! Have been covering North West Kent as that is where I'm normally based. Surprising at times what you find when you dive down a road/street that you have not visited before. Some you think, "I may come here sometime again and explore" and other places where you think " mmmm... lets get out of here before my wheels disappear"!

Most of my tracks are done by "driveby surveying" that is using my Navman N40i, which is OK for the raw logs, but as I found out don't trust it for anything else.

I normally whizz round unmapped roads while going onto or from work, to get the roads on the map then return later at leisure to pickup the detail.

So to date I think I've covered all the roads in Cliffe Woods in Kent, some bits of the surrounding areas. One area I've tried to sort out is the new layout at the M25 J2 /A2 junction, but have failed so far, go there by day it's full of traffic (a car park!) or at night its closed because its still being built!

Enough for now,......and before I forget thanks to TimSC for his encouragement email :-)