Another 3789 objects uploading on JOSM. This upload has an estimated time of ~45mins, that's my longest yet I think.

Newcastle is *nearing* completion. I'd guestimate that there's 1 or 2 night's of work left to trace the rest of the roads, parks, bushland, streams/drains and shopping centers.

I hope a lot more people get involved to collect names and POIs.

I'll ramble a bit.

I just completed a large chunk of Newcastle in JOSM (Yahoo tracing). I finally got around to setting up my desktop computer again after the move from Lismore and since JOSM runs much faster on it than on my eeepc a lot got done.

One surprise though was the discovery of a dead mouse inside my PSU. One of our dogs was licking the back of my computer so I looked inside. Hopefully I can sleep with the smell.

I added a few cycleways around Newcastle Uni yesterday, soon it might be worth extending the cycle map up this way (2 weeks ago there was only ~5km of cycleway drawn).

There's an insane amount of name collection to do around Newcastle now. No way I'll be able to find time to do it all myself. We need more contributors! *thinks of more ways to advertise OSM*. Hopefully the increased coverage will attract more people. As the map becomes more useful it will be great to see it in more practical applications.

It'd be cool if geocaching.com.au could add OSM to their list of cache location maps, that would certainly increase the awareness of OSM anyway.

I can't wait to see this Wednesday's Mapnik update for Newcastle, so much has been added in the last week!

I did a fair bit of bushwalking today. In the morning a few extra tracks in Glenrock State Recreation Area were added, then after lunch I went up to Mt Sugarloaf and walked a good chunk of the tracks around it. They are all easy grade walks, designed for families. 3 geocaches are in the area too which makes it a bit more interesting :).

This area is littered with picnic tables, it would be cool to mark all of them on the map. There are also lots of wood fired BBQs and a couple of gas ones.

As far as I know OSM is one of the few maps which has all the trails marked on it. The only other places I've seen them marked were in a local bushwalking book and on the info board at Mt Sugarloaf.

I'm meeting friends up there for lunch tomorrow so a few more features might pop up :).

Well ok, so I've got a thing for maps. You have to at least admit that having all those little pockets of bushland drawn in makes the map look seriously cool (view through osmarender).

Studying via correspondence is having a very positive effect on the state of my local area. I read notes online for an hour, then since I'm already at the computer switching over to an hour of mapping is a logical next activity.

I need to obtain a cheap P&S camera so that street names can be easily collected while cycling. Along with post boxes, public phones, fast food joints, petrol stations, traffic lights, park names...um...wow, at least there's still a lot to do.

In the next week I hope to have an OSM themed geocache planted somewhere. Maybe put a cheap micro SD card in there with OSM pre-loaded as a FTF prize.

*sigh* I just did ~24km of cycling with a couple of mishaps. Firstly I did the first half with the GPX log turned off, then, due to having loaded routable maps last night, the second half was set to lock on road.

Well, just another excuse to go for a ride tomorrow ay?

In case you haven't seen them yet the mapsource installers for various routable Garmin maps are here: http://emexes.powweb.com/osm/download.html

I moved back to Newcastle from Lismore yesterday and have already been out mapping!

I did a few new tracks in the Glenrock State Recreation Area and confirmed/corrected a few others. Bellbird Bridge geocache was found on the way too :).

Anyway, by now many of the changes should be uploaded from JOSM.

I've done some learning about multipolygon relations as there are some private property sections in the park. Hopefully they work...*crosses fingers*.

The area is getting quite complex with the large number of walking and cycling trails cris-crossing. Quite often 2 trails run so close together that GPS errors can cause the GPX tracks to overlap.

Anyway, I'd like to eventually have a high accuracy and high detail map of the park which can be printed and handed out or left in geocaches in order to increase the popularity of OSM.

...and PHWAP! Ways everywhere!

I got back from my holliday a week ago and have since ridden 50km around Mullumbimby. It's not 100% yet as there's a few streets to the SW which are a bit hilly (up around the Hospital and Cemetary) but it's much more complete than it was.

Now all I need is internet access that's not behing a password'ed proxy so I can upload the changes.

Oh, and why aren't the waterway=river ways not rendering? *grumbles*.

My current holiday has taken me through the Blue Mountains and subsequently much bushwalking ensued! So now OSM has a few extra bushwalks in the Grose Valley, including:

Perrys Track
Braeside Walk (Branch of the track from Govetts Leap to Evans Lookout)
Victoria Falls Lookout to Acacia Flat Camping Area
Pearces Pass Junction is now marked (Entrance to valley from Bells Line of Road)
Lockley Pylon track Junction
Pulpit Rock lookout and associated tracks/stairs
Pulpit Rock to Govetts Leap
Completion of the Grand Canyon track with high sensitivity receiver
Cliffs were marked in from Yahoo imagery

TODO:
Rodriguez pass (Grand Canyon to Govetts Leap via valley floor, closed as of July '08 due to fire/landslide damage)
Junction Rock to Acacia Flat Camping Area
Lockley Pylon track
Pearces Pass
Popes Glen trail
Evans Lookout Road

I am totally stuffed now, all up it was 22km on the first day, and 11km + 600m climb on the 2nd. good fun :).

Recently I entered a few tracks in Newcastle too, nothing major though.

It would be great to finish all those trails then publish a walking map of some sort. Maybe have descriptions of all the walks, lengths, difficulty, transport options etc.

First diary post, this is mostly rambles but hopefully someone might like reading it.

While on hollidays in Victoria I decided to do as much mapping as I could during my everyday travels. On the first day all the streets in Port Albert were mapped, along with the park, boatramp, toilets and the old port walking trail. Food and fuel is yet to be mapped.

A couple of days later I went up to the Tarra-Bulga National park and did the all the "touristy" walks around there (the suspension bridge, fern gully walk etc). The longer fire trails such as the Wild Cherry Trail, the old Balook to Yarram road and Diaper Track are best done by someone on 2 wheels (or 4WD where allowed, wild cherry is in the park and behind a locked gate, balook to yarram rd and diaper track can be driven on West of Bulga Road).

The Tarra Valley walk was also attempted, but GPS reception is shocking along the walk, even my Legend HCx had more error then the size of the track! But an attempt at the map was made anyway, the picnic tables and toilets are there, even if they're 50m off. In the process a good trace of Tarra Valley Road was collected either way.

Other roads mapped included Bulga Road, Lower Carrajung Lower Road, Kees Rd and Napier Rd in Won Wron State Forest (we collected firewood, I took the GPS).

The town of Yarram is half-done, I did ~90% of the roads on the West of the main street and ~20% of those right of the main road. This was an exercise in using photo-logging which worked rather well.