I'm in the US now visiting Mom. I'd downloaded the Garmin routable maps from Lambertus for California and uploaded to my Garmin eTrek Vista HCx. Before I left Thailand I played with these maps using Garmin Road Trip (Mac). The routing seemed to work just fine.

However, when trying to drive from the San Fernando Valley (LA, California) to Vasquez Rocks, northeast of LA I ran into massive trouble. The routing started out fine, heading us up Interstate 5 and over to California route 14; the same route I'd pick looking at a paper map.

But then, about half way there, the GPSr said to get off the highway. At first I figured this was the "shortest route" that I'd specified, but I soon realized that things were seriously amiss. The GPSr was advising us start heading back south to Interstate 5, the exact opposite direction from our goal. And, when I looked at the GPSr map, I realized that areas south of us were being displayed as being north of us. In short, it seemed that map tiles were either swapped (north for south) or overlapped. I guess this caused the routing peculiarities.

I turned navigation "off" and continued on with the paper map.

Once we got out of the overlap area things seemed back to normal.

I'm away from home and don't have any Garmin software available, so I can't explore this more fully. Will look again when I'm back in Thailand.

I've been at this for about three months now and think that I finally have the hang of the basics. I'm using an eTrex Vista HCx GPSr and an old Canon PowerShot A510 digital camera. Most of the time I map via mountain bike; a Trek 4300. I use GPSPhotoLinker (Mac) to geotag the photos and JOSM to do most of the editing. For some reason, the Yahoo Sat WMS is no longer working in JOSM, so I use merkaartor if I need a satellite image or if I need to draw a large number of ways.

There are a very small number of us mapping in Northeast Thailand so the going is slow. Some cities with active mappers (such as Khon Kaen) are steadily improving while others are rather static. For example, it appears that no one is mapping the tourist-frequented Nong Khai (gateway to Laos).

At the moment I'm concentrating on getting the roads in my immediate vicinity mapped and named. Once that's done I'll work on getting more POI's identified and mapped.

One of the slowest parts of the process is getting Thai names entered in Thai script. I am not fluent in Thai, although I can read. I've never mastered the Thai keyboard, so there is a lot of hunt and peck. And, sometimes the signs that I photograph are in a fancy font that I have difficulty with.

As I've mentioned, http://keepright.ipax.at/ has been a very helpful learning tool.

I started using the Keep Right data consistency checks for OSM. You can find the start page here:

http://keepright.ipax.at/

This is a great tool for checking your own work and that of others. For a beginner like me it's a wonderful training tool. It was a little bit daunting at first, but once I got the hang of it I managed to correct (I hope) lots of errors that I had introduced to the map.

If you have the Remote plugin installed for JOSM, your clean up task will be a lot easier:

osm.wiki/index.php/JOSM/Plugins/RemoteControl

In the last few days I've seen the diary of one fellow who wants to map rubbish bins and another, on the forum, who wants to map drinking water fountains and public restrooms.

And, here am I, in rural Thailand, still struggling to get traces of major highways.

Will I ever see the day when Thailand is so well mapped that I'll actually be concerned with rubbish bins, drinking fountains and public conveniences?

I doubt it.

For the time being I've decided to devote my time to learning Mapnik. So far it's a daunting task. My goal is to acquire the skill necessary to produce maps that are actually useful to residents of and visitors to the corner of Thailand in which I reside. I'll continue to carry my GPS when I'm out and about and upload tracks of unmapped areas. But, until I master Mapnik, data gathering expeditions have become a low priority.

It finally became impossible for me to install Mapnik on a Mac running Snow Leopard. There are just too many conflicts between the Python installed by Snow Leopard and the Python from Macports that Mapnik wants you to install. I suspect it is because both a version 2.6, so if you run:

Bleach:~ mnewman$ sudo python_select python26

How do you ever know which version 2.6 has been selected?

Anyway, I gave up on the Mac and moved to Ubuntu, a linux variant which I run on my Mac using Sun's VirtualBox.

I installed Mapnik using the Synaptic package manager. This took less than half an hour. After fumbling a bit with the "Hello World" tutorial:

http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/GettingStarted

I was actually able to produce a map:

http://www.mgnewman.com/sz/world.png

I suppose the next step is to try to actually learn Mapnik. It looks daunting.

So, yesterday I managed to get mapnik to run. Today, I get this:

——
Bleach:~ mnewman$ sudo python_select python26
Selecting version "python26" for python
Bleach:~ mnewman$ python
Python 2.6.3 (r263:75183, Oct 9 2009, 11:47:07)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import mapnik
Fatal Python error: Interpreter not initialized (version mismatch?)
Abort trap
——

I haven't done anything since successfully running mapnik yesterday, so how did a "version mismatch" materialize while I was sleeping?

I spent about eight hours today (eight hours when I could have been out mapping) trying to install mapnik. I followed the instructions here:

http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/MacInstallation

But, there are some problems with these instructions. For example, the instructions provide a link to install Macports, but the link is to version 1.7.1, which doesn't work with Snow Leopard. The correct version (as of this writing) is 1.8.1. Too bad no one had time to update the instructions.

The instructions tell you that you have to install the Macports Python 2.6 and use that instead of Python 2.5 which comes with Leopard. However, Snow Leopard come with 2.6. Of course, the instructions are silent as to whether you need the Macports version or if you can use the 2.6 version that gets installed with Snow Leopard. I decided to install the Macports version, for no good reason.

From there, the installation of mapnik from Macports seemed to go smoothly. No compilation errors.

However, for a long time I got stuck here:

>>> import mapnik
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
ImportError: No module named mapnik

I fixed some paths and was able to get an error free:

>>> import mapnik

This also worked:

>>> dir(mapnik)
['BoostPythonMetaclass', 'Color', 'Coord', 'CreateDatasource', 'Datasource',…]

But, now I'm stuck here:

>>> help(mapnik)
Segmentation fault

Too tired to continue today. But, it looks like mapnik is installed. Maybe I'll use the tutorial to create an actual map tile tomorrow.

Mapping the earth is a massive project; especially in the less developed parts of the world where people are less likely to have the tools and training to do the job and where the perceived need for maps is less than it is in the developed world. People create maps not because they are obsessive-compulsive nerds who want to make sure that they've tagged every letterbox in Mannheim but because they see maps as a useful tool for getting on with their lives.

When it comes to OSM, marketing the map is important. By marketing, I don't mean advertising or promoting, but by showing off. The slippy map that appears on OSM home page should be a showplace for OSM data and what can be done with it. I hope I'm not offending anyone by asserting that the current effort leaves much to be desired. That homepage should be a showplace, not a portal. (Move all the contributor items, like Edit, History, etc., to a separate page.)

Get rid of the Plus Sign menu icon and move all of the map options to a visible menu on the left hand sidebar. (Why is "Map Key" there, but not the overlays options?) Open the data layer by default, but don't list all the data objects; only list the one that is under the mouse pointer or that has been clicked. Make listing all of the data objects an option.

Make that homepage so easy to understand that even an old fart like me gets it on the first try. Remember, we want to attract people with easy-to-use simplicity, not scare them away with needless complexity.

I've been working hard over the last few months to map the area where I live (Korat, Thailand) and a resort area near here (Wang Nam Khiao, near Thap Lan national park, Thailand).

What's frustrating is that POI icons only show up at high zoom levels. While this might be appropriate for urban areas where you need to avoid icon clutter at low zoom levels, it is highly inappropriate for rural and wilderness areas where POIs are few and far between and displaying them at low levels would enable users to orient themselves and get better information out of the map.

I've noticed other areas where OSM is very Euro and urban-centric. Little thought has been given to making OSM useful in places that are less developed and less densely populated.