I recorded some notes and POIs for all the areas mentioned in the subject; had to pick one for the map so went for centre of Calgary.

Nowadays I generally turn the logging on and off some random time before/after I get to any home (or wherever I'm staying) I want to keep anonymous.

I've been using gpsbabel for all my gpx file conversion/filtering needs, haven't tried out mapsource or others yet. Maybe I will for this lot. Please be patient for the edits though, I am recovering from a cold I caught while out there, trying to get my body clock back to normal, catching up in my 9-5 and have a fairly busy social life this week too.

I love the Holux M-241, but it really does eat up AA batteries. They quote up to 9hours (IIRC) but if you're checking it and switching modes, changing the logging settings while in use then battery life can drop noticably - always carry a spare AA or two for a full day out. Rechargables work ok but I need to change them out often enough that it's a little annoying. At least they're cheap and easily available anywhere. The other option is leaving it plugged into a USB port of a laptop (I have an Eee with an extended battery pack just great for the task) as much as poss, as that can power it (but not charge any batteries) and means I can keep an extra copy of the log for resiliance/see the data right away.

Just make sure you upgrade the firmware to v1.11 or the latest as that doesn't suffer from losing all your track logs if it gets switched off while the log is running (like I've seen complained about in other reviews - I've never had that problem, but am wondering if its a "feature" of the provided software on Windows which I don't use). Read other reviews too (there are a few out there). I have had it switch off when knocked around by dropping/banging into something, am wondering if the battery spring needs bending a bit to make it more resiliant to tough treatment (I'm good at that :-). I bought mine already upgraded to 1.11 but it shouldn't be too hard with Holux's provided downloads to do it.

There are a couple of other gps's I considered, but having the LCD display on a unit this cheap is really handy and inspires confidence that its working well compared to the single on/off/flashing type indicator light you get on most others at the same sort of price range. Also lots of fun watching the speed and distance on those modes (as long as you're not the one driving obv.), or catching a glance when flying down a steep hill on your bike to see how fast it is!

I do remember an OSM team member posting something about this shortly after I signed up but I didn't understand areas then (and just about ways); thanks, I really wanted something like this to apply to some edits I did recently so I'll try to fix them.

Thanks for the tip!

FYI: Check one of the posts soon-ish after this for smsm1's comment about unnamed ways rendering (marks them red round the outline of the roads, so shows up on the map easily and at fairly zoomed-out levels). it's http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~random/no-names/

I end up doing this reasonably often in JOSM so the right bits of a road are named correctly, or so a oneway=yes tag applies to the right segments.

I find it easier to select the NODE first, then hold shift and select the way - doing it the other way round makes it harder to see if I've clicked the node correctly, because the way is already quite bright and the node is less visible.

For newer users: In josm, 'P' is the keyboard shortcut to split it - listed after the menu item; its not S because S is the shortcut for switching to select mode and much more commonly needed.

Aha! Thankyou very much smsm1! That's the one I was looking for!

but after a quick look - does it also mark main roads like A-classified dual carriageways as unnamed if they only have the ref (eg "A12" but no name for the individual sections that may well be named too, although I know some bits of it are "Ipswich Road" everybody always just says "A12"). If it doesn't it would be slightly nicer to mark them as less bright red 'cos the names aren't so essential as often the number is all that's used to refer to them. But that's being picky :)

'Namespace' (well if not that what else do we call the colon-ifying (lol) that people will understand) suggestion for the name stuff (and would work for other things too): how about name:status=old or =absent or =deprecated or whatever for the different states? We could standardise a selection of values. Do we have a standard for alternative names/nicknames (aliases) for a road? They're usually very local if there are any. I know the different languages are name:=....

I get that - namespaces are heirarchical and usually if you alter a sub-domain of it, it knows to automatically affect the others and link them; whereas it actually doesn't care what the tag name is so using the colon is not a specific feature as such, its just a human-added abstraction layer we've made a convention.

Further thought I wanted to put here...

The namespace way is also more happy with possible extensions like 'name:old' or :previous or :alternate if something's changed name recently but still referred to by old name a lot, and it means any renderer can understand that these other tags may need to be searchable or at least what they're to do with and can be displayed in association with, rather than needing to know about 'unnamed' or 'oldname' or other various (relatively) random tags that could be used. The more I think about this the more I like the namespace thing!

name=__none__ is very very pythonic!

Err... No! Unless we're suddenly becoming python developers of course :)

I like name:absent best, as it is then a 'subset' of the 'named' info and that seems to fit. Im hunting out the discussion to make these comments on...

Also doing some entries in the Deptford (in particular, leading up to the station) - Dept. Church Street was a main road not yet named!

Wow, that's quite a setup. I'm envious! I just have a cheap £2.50 ebay jobbie to attach my Nokia N95 to my bike, it doesn't have a proper attachment clip anywhere and I think I'm going to have to rely on rubber bands to stop it slipping lose and eventually falling off (as my one test so far showed - ok for good quality roads but bumps or potholes gradually work it lose).

Kill that last post - the "Save button" I wasnt thinking clearly enough (it _is_ 5am!) saved the post, not the map location I clicked on.

Or I'll write it in the comments...

So, I'd been experimenting with video recording of stuff as I cycle around and talking over it to make audio notes; didn't need to care about gps tracks as mostly adding little features where I can id the place nicely already.

Anyway, I am out and about and made a large 'note' with lots of details on my phone; running lots of apps (including gps log, camera, gallery for quick look at which bits didn't appear to have details), when it slows down so I tried to quit a few things (3 java apps plus a couple of phone builtin apps... it was pushing things a bit). But then, it managed to screw up and kill my note I was entering. f*$% %£"& !*$% damn.. Annoying. Lots of post box reference no's gone and a few telephone box no's.

But no panic, right, I still have my near-on 100Mb of mpeg4 video on the phone saved nicely (in high res, perhaps I shoulda turned it down a little for battery saving, but didnt matter this time).

Having got home, I start processing it, and then it gets killed (as mentioned above in the diary post content).... GRRRRR!!!! Not happy! And I've been deleting the video as I do it. I know, I know, I should upload and THEN delete the videos (done in several shorter sections)... It's late... I'm annoyed.. But still want to go back while the memories are fresh in my head.

I was filling in amenities, extra info and a church and pub or two around east side of Park Lane in London.

I'm really too addicted to this aren't I. I need help, right?

Yeah, I discovered after I found the site today - just misremembered it. I should have remembered from it being "tmJ" not "tmL" for the app. name in my launcher.

Yet to get any maps on it; generated a few traces and waypoints though.

Oh, did some exploring of the unnamed roads to the East of Park Lane tonight on the way back from an evening in a pub.

One of the most interesting diary entries in the last few days with the watery intrigue! Hope you can work it all out.

I took a look at another entry I found that specified it and took a bit of a guess that it was no. of bikes rather than no. things to lock them to, but thanks for all the comments guys as I wanted more of a consensus (the one I found could have been the odd one out or my guess could have been wrong).

These diaries really do seem to get well read and replied to/commented on. Makes you want to post here more to see the encouraging and useful feedback!

Sounds like a Farnham mapping party is a good idea. Can't I advertise on a calendar somewhere - seen one, just can't remember what site it was on... Thinking of weekend of 12th September.