Woo!

I had been trying to map some of Wolverhampton. There is no yahoo aerial imagery of that area - so just on the of chance, I emailed the city council.

Sadly, they apparently don't own the rights to their imagery layers - but I was pleased to get a nice reply from someone who actually knew the answer to the question.

I've had a play with the cloudmade map style editor.
Its quite fun, be it a bit limited.
I made a different nonames map style which I modestly think is a little clearer.

I went to this industrial park, and found a few roads where then name was labelled differently on either side of the road. One side would have a space and and extra 's' on the end. So is one in error? (If so, which?) Or do we really have to label each side of the road?

I also notice that 'Hooties' has been rendered rather oddly.

It was a nice weekend, so managed to get another 80 road names. (As well as other details)
Then it comes to entering the data into OSM . . . /must/ .. /keep/ .. /eyes/ .. /open/. I think the convenience stores can wait until tomorrow to be entered!

Location: (51.5473, 0.0632) and (51.5339, 0.0397)

Around the same time a bridge from London to Porto (Portugal) was built in record time, a huge number of roads to the South of town where demolished. Maybe this is where the materials to build this road bridge came from! I don't want to stand in the way of progress, but I feel sorry for the poor folk left without roads outside their homes.

If this event wasn't traumatic enough for the fellows of Porto, now, to top it off, Porto has flooded! (According to osmarender)

I wonder if UN troops will be borough in to help with the flood, and help stabilise the area.

Today was a cold and overcast day, but this did not put me off wandering around the roads around green street (e7 UK), and finding 25 road names. This time was slightly different then before, as I had put an app on my phone, so that I could record a track with its GPS. I hadn't bothered before, as the areas have good yahoo images, but its nice to record where you have actually been.

I am working out from where I live, and have been tackling a big un-named block of roads around east ham. This was my 4th venture into the area which seems to have an amazing number of sari shops. The area of un-named roads just keeps going east, for a very long way, but now that I've mapped the west end of the block, I think I'll next map areas north and south of me.

I have of course mapped other areas before, but never bothered to write a diary.
My method has so far involved printing out the "no names" map of an area, and putting this in a A4 book. I can then wander around the area, adding details to the map that I find. I'm not sure how little pre-work is needed for this strategy. I guess I'll find out sooner or later!

I've given this phone app to another I work with, and asked them to turn in on, as they go around their area. Is this cheating? Well - I'm still doing the data entry! I've done a bit of sketching of the areal images too. Quite satisfying when you draw a lake, and a week later, someone has labelled it for you. Out of copyright maps are fun to use too - partly I think, because so much has changed since. But with local knowledge, handy for plotting old roads and features.

So I will conclude my first entry, wondering if I will add more in future.