I’ve been diligently putting some truly boring information about my local High Street. Removing shops that don’t exist, adding new ones and adjusting opening times. It’s a shame businesses do not feel the need to do it themselves on OSM. I was wondering why is this, but then I realised that none of the navigation application I am using displays this information. I can check it on the Every Door and that’s pretty much it. Google Maps, by comparison, makes it really easy to see it and at the same time warns you of closing times, which makes it really practical in urban setting.

Having made comparison to the Map-That-Cannot-Be-Named, I realised how inaccurate Her* data is for my immediate neighbourhood. I’ve looked up some other places and though it would always take me more or less to the right location, the exact positions or addresses were off by quite some margin. At the same time, kudos to the interpolation heuristics that can find approximate addresses even in the absence of good data.

Especially that I am now realising how difficult addressing is. In my naivety I always though of streets as linear objects, with Hausdorff dimension 1 and ordered house numbers perhaps with an odd/even partition. Couldn’t be more wrong. I need to file a request to change the name of Dale Lane to Fractal Lane or Hausdorff Street (strasse?) to celebrate its many dendritic offshoots and arbitrary switch from consecutive ordering to odd/even ordering.

*Maps are feminine, right? Just like ships or cars.