'Fish and Visitors all smell after three days'
It looks like the end of the OSM path for me.
I retain copyright over all my work and will merely check back to ensure that anything I have contributed is not included in any ODbL licensed map.

drlizau's Diary
Recent diary entries
We needed some things from shops not available locally, and chose to drive to Wagga Wagga to get them. The usual route was closed by flood waters from the Murrumbidgee River over the Sturt Highway, so a detour was taken. Part way along I realise that there isn't enough fuel to continue that route, as high octane fuel can't be bought in small towns near here, so the detour was amended to reach a suitable fuel station.
Of course, this means more roads to map, more side roads to identify and a visit to the flooded river along the way.
We visited Barellan, Narrandera, Coolamon and Wagga and have been adding to the map for those places overnight. One of the places we wished to visit in Wagga was in an area traced from Nearmap, so we have been able to add street names to some of that area.
Travel distance for the day - 410Km
only about 25 degrees, with a strong wind, so a quick trip out to the mapping area of interest and a slow trip home.
Tyre fixed, so on the MTB, better traction but I missed the suspension seat post.
some areas were really muddy, and I had to dismount. then I got mud all through my cleats, so I had to find a channel I could access to wash my feet and sandals.
I didn't want the clay to dry with my feet fixed to the pedals, as that makes dismounting difficult and painful.
36km, 3 hours to ride because of the rough tracks and the wind.
One road still to ride in that area.
Today was a "nice day", a good day for cycling provided one didn't leave too late, as the temperature was forecast to reach 35.
I took the pump out to the mountain bike, only to find that one of the valve stems was bulbous and looked like it would disintegrate with increased pressure. The tyres aren't easy to change as they are flatproof, so I took the hybrid with the 700C tyres and left them a little soft.
Water, banana, GPS and camera and I set off to map some farm roads which have been waiting to join the map. 34km, mostly on unsealed roads, and about 2 hours actual riding. Some of the roads were still really wet and unsuitable for cars, but I only had to dismount and push twice. I saw few people and a few dogs.
The trip homewards was into a strong wind so progress was slow. I've filled in another corner of the map, and have decided on the next area to visit, if its not too hot, and after I've changed that inner tube on the MTB.
I've seen quoted on a mailing list that 130 persons have signed up to ODbL in 12 weeks.
A bit of work with the calculator lets me predict that to have the 12,500 mappers who have contributed 99% of the data signed up will take until January 2033 at that rate.
I have removed all my gps traces from the OSM database.
I have worked primarily from survey.
If anyone wishes to query my edits regarding source, position etc, I am happy
to answer private emails or email via the OSM site regarding my gps traces.
It's Australia Day, so we set out to put more of Australia on the map.
We started our mapping activities in Narrandera, with a walk up and down the main street photographing POIs. Then off to Grong Grong, Matong and Ganmain to finish off some mapping we'd started there over a year ago. Streets completed in two villages and one small town, back to Narrandera for fuel and then up the Narrandera Barellan road because the southern end had only been traced from Landsat. From there west up Colinroobie Road, then took another road north which wasn't on OSM and on the sat-nav (Sensis origin map) had no name.
Only about 3km back to the main road and the car decided to stop. Here the fun started, as the fuel line was broken and we needed a tilt tray truck to transport the car home (this is the middle of nowhere, but not technically Outback like yesterday).
The lady on the phone 500km away in Sydney has to work out where we are, but our road isn't on her map at all, on our sat-nav it has no name, and she can't work out to where to send the truck from the GPS co-ordinates. I know the name of the road, Middle Road, but that doesn't help anyone because that name doesn't appear on anyone's map - mine, the lady in Sydney's map or the truck driver's map.
Eventually all goes well and over the phone we can explain to the truck driver how to find us.
Interestingly the mtkbabel chip in the recording gps shows a maximum range of 7m for the hour and a half it stayed in one spot. We haven't yet checked the results from the Garmin for that time.
This spot is still a blank on OSM, but soon a road will be there, and then someone else may benefit from our adventurous afternoon.
It's not a holiday today, but our staff voted for their "Picnic Day" today, so we all had a day off.
Swamp and I headed to Hillston, collected more streets and POIs, then across the Lachlan Valley Way to Lake Cargelligo. The lake has a small puddle in the centre, and that's it. The drought is very bad in the Lachlan Valley, with no flow in the river at present. The day was hot, the thermostat on the car airconditioner had a gwarmy moment and changed from too cold to too hot which wasn't very comfortable until we realised that setting it to 18 would get cold air out.
We finished quickly in Lake Cargelligo and haven't finished the POI survey, but there are still about 5 villages in the district to map which will make a full day's work another time.
Nothing is on the map yet - I haven't downloaded gps tracks or photos.
Australia Day tomorrow - another destination for OSM mapping.
Lake Cargelligo
Coordinates: -33.300353005672; 146.3706624195
Hillston
I've put my collection of geo-referencing photos on the net. They aren't brilliant artistic works but serve as evidence for my collection of data on OSM.
I've used www.zoph.org which allows the photos to be displayed against an OSM map. At present the code is using a Google API so there is legitimately a Google marker on the map when you see it.
http://www.billiau.net/zoph/photo.php?album_id=23&_order=date&_off=344
shows a sign for a combined walking and cycling path in Darwin with a speed limit.
The import code has a patch available to read the latitude and longitude from exif data, so photos now are geotagged with GPS correlate and uploaded to zoph, displaying the position automatically.
Now I've passed my second birthday (OSM that is).
I was going to write a note on the day, but forgot about it. I was busy at work getting ready to go on one of those journeys which leads to new mapping. I've driven this same route many times, and now concentrate on getting information on a short segment each trip, hoping to spend just 30 minutes on OSM in a five hour trip.
The results of two trips in two weeks are now some speed zones defined, some work on the Mount Stromlo site, and a few more roads in Temora. I have a mental cake of Temora, and visit one slice each trip.
Temora -34.44933, 147.53555
Mount Stromlo -35.31871, 149.01047
I've been putting my geo-referencing photos into zoph on my website, and trying to hack the import script so it will load the gps co-ords from the exif data.
So far, only partial success.
Spent some time last week staying in South Preston. I've put in some POIs and some laneways, upgraded streets from the MMBW map to survey status, and finally finished the changeset.
While travelling on the tram I did appreciate those who had numbered the tram stops so I didn't get lost as I followed my travels on Navit on my Freerunner.
http://rankinssprings.googlepages.com/
Not that we are Twitchers, this event was an opportunity to visit some birdwatching sites and add them to OSM.
There are seven sites, and about 180km of driving to visit them all from our house.
I also collected a lot of POIs from the village of Rankins Springs while we were there, they just haven't found their way onto the map yet.
I thought I would try these two methods on the one area and compare the results for a street lined with shops on each side.
GPS traces have poorer accuracy in these areas as the shops have awnings over the footpath. Doing it on paper might solve some of these difficulties.
Attempt One. walking-papers. Area selected and downloaded. Wouldn't print out at home due to "technical issues". Printed it out at work and carefully brought the paper home. Took it to Corrimal and lost the piece of paper.
Attempt Two. geotagged photos. Took a late evening walk with the camera / GPS combo. Took the photos and recorded the way. Back at home some days later and all of those photos are non-existent, as the memory card failed earlier that day. Several attempts on forensic recovery of the data but it wasn't there to be removed.
Conclusion. Score is nil all and the shops still need marking on the map.
Brisbane's latest architectural icon - the $63 million Kurilpa Bridge - is now open.
see it now on OSM
http://osm.org/go/ueD2VFP1q-
(not my part of the parish, but worth shouting about)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/04/2704221.htm
I was putting in some data from a trip three weeks back and was really pleased to see that someone has mapped lots of rural roads in the general area.
It's a big change from when I started and my work didn't meet up with anyone else's work.
So I've belonged to OSM now for slightly more than 6 months.
I haven't been out in my car for a couple of months after getting water in the motor on a long mapping trip, but last weekend we went in the work ute to Wollongong. After 150km we decided it was time to get a map and choose a route which was unmapped.
So we went exploring, mapped a bit in some towns and villages and finally got back to the main road.
On the way home another unmapped road was chosen, but more fun than that I tried taking photos of street and road signs, for geotagging. It's quite an art getting a photo in focus at 100kmh so some are good and others aren't.
It's great to photograph strange road junctions, overhead bridges with height limits, road names, the speed limit signs and faster than the pen and paper method. Then the camera battery was flat and the photos were stopped.
I'm having a lot of fun deciding where to go and what to see, and still lending out my GPS to get more traces of more roads.
Now we really belong to the rest of the country. Major highways in the area are nearly complete and quite a few small towns too.
Cycle work today to get some more traces in another area of town.
The phrase comes from a poem - don't be offended.
Yesterday my gps took a 630km trip to Hay and other parts to start recording some highways. Today its off again to southern parts and probably a shorter trip, courtesy of the man who changes eftpos machines.
Expect some progress after a few days - it will take time to make tracks from all that data.
On Friday I have to go to Adelaide and will choose different ways for each direction so that more highways get mapped.
Yesterday I took a few deviations home from work - Saturday is a half day - to fill in some tracks.
Today I set out to do some unsealed roads near home, riding about 14km on some bad surfaces. At that speed, setting the GPS to record a point every 30 secs has given me some very usable traces.
At the same time, my husband has ridden around in town and recorded another track.
Tomorrow I go to work, but I will leave my GPS with a friend who has to drive about 300km Monday and maybe 400km on Tuesday so we can get some main roads recorded.
OpenStreetMap shows me living in a big blank space.
So far I've collected a few short GPS traces and uploaded them but still nothing is seen on the map.
I'm working out how to get others collecting traces who are driving long distances and by next month we hope to have joined the rest of Australia.