After some month without a logger I can gather tracks again. The new device is a Locosys BGT-31. It is faster and has much better reception than the old BGT-11. First areas are in the map, the story continues ...

Yesterday my GPS logger did not write anything of my two hour tour onto the SD card for unknown reason. Could have been a software glitch or an improperly seated SD card. A short test afterwards was successful, so the device and the card are OK. So I started out again today...

Last friday I talked to a friend about OpenStreetMap and showed him what is going on. His hometown is pretty much non-existant at the moment and he instantly favoured the idea to join and map out his home.

Between the Dr.-Enk-Straße and Hermann-Hiller-Straße should be a small way (footpath?) under the name of Spendlingerweg. It is shown on all maps I could find, but in the real world there is only a meadow, with a fence. Therefore I think that it could be an easteregg. Or it is hopelessly outdated information.

Checking again I found that somehow the cookie policy for ".openstreetmap.org" was set to "deny", which had locked me out of the site effectively. After changing it back to "accept" the login worked like a charm.

So be careful with cookie policies. :-)

Up to now I used the KDE web browser konqueror exclusively for work on OpenStreetMap. But since today I'm no longer able to get a valid login done. My account and password are accepted, but I still get the "Login | Sign up" functions offered instead of the usual options after a successful login. There is no error message.

With Firefox the login works fine, so it is not a problem with the credentials. Hmmm ... I have to investigate a bit more. I do hope that konqueror was not locked out as I do almost all web access with it.

If there are more konqueror users seeing the same kind of behaviour, please send a short message to me.

Learning JOSM is not so hard as it looked like at first. Now that I know JOSM a bit I never want go back to Potlatch. With Potlatch I produced so many mistakes! Now with JOSM I found the problems and could iron them out. Accuracy is so much better. This is what I looked for. Only the OSM tiles in the background layer have way to low resolution and are not really helpful. Maybe I can change this somehow?

After installing Java 1.5.0 on my box JOSM is up and running. At first JOSM is a bit "strange" to use, but within some hours most things were clear. Only the layers still vex me. More often than not I see the "topmost" layer only.

OK, there are some new traces, helping me to map out my neighborhood. Currently I'm working with Potlatch, but using an old version of the flash software really makes editing difficult. Therefore I need to get JOSM running, but the broken NVidia driver keeps me from it.

Today I tried the BGT-11 GPS logger and got two traces, which I uploaded. Well, it worked and the map grew some previously unknown streets. :-)

My nearest neighbor is about 20 km away, so I'm pretty alone here. Until I get my GPS logger I can only hope for good luck, which means that someone drives through my area and uploads the trace.

It will take at least several months until my new smartphone will be able to do the job as GPS logger. So I will get myself a cheap GPS logger to get started with mapping soon.

After I found the site I was instantly attracted by the idea. I'm planning to get myself an OpenMoko smartphone soon which will have a builtin GPS sensor. I expect OpenStreetMap to be a great companion for the device, for mapping and navigation.