I figured I'd get some mapping done today. I've finished my work for the week (thanks to the weak economy, dreadful pun fully intended,) so I was looking to get out of the house.

“I'll map Shorncliffe,” I internalised. I'd been meaning to do it for ages, but never got around to making my way out there. “I'll take my bike; it's going to be great!”

So I watched the sun rise, waited until about half past seven before leaving, figuring I'll beat any morning traffic by the time I get there. I packed my phone, my keychain GPS, two bottles of iced water, my bike lock... “What am I forgetting?” kept running through my head. I was nearly out the door when I remembered I'd forgotten to load the latest noname maps on my phone, I'd be quite literally lost without them.

I put everything down next to my PC, and fired up TangoGPS — I use it to download the maps in the format that Cache Creator uses. The CloudMade minutely tile server (where I'm still getting my nonames, because I'm not sure if the official OSM server updates as quickly yet) was running really slowly and kept timing out. I managed to download the relevant tiles, but it took about ten minutes of fiddling and refreshing to do so. I copied the maps over, and fired up Mobile Trail Explorer to test if they were working properly. I was disappointed to find they weren't.

I did this three times before giving up and downgrading to the last version I'd used successfully. It worked this time, and I made a mental note to fix it up later.

I headed out, stopped by for a sausage roll from the awesome bakery down the road, and set off along the Boondall Wetlands Bikeway.

I got as far as the lookout before my bike started making these really colossally horrible noises. It usually makes a scraping sound as the wheel turns — something to do with the rear breaks I think — but I haven't taken it for a service in years. For some reason after hitting the brakes hard downhill, they started making a clanging reverberating knocking sound, or sort of a metallic dinging even. I pulled over and panicked for a little bit, before trying to work out if I could un-ding the damn thing.

I wasn't going to cycle around the place with my bike making such a stupidly loud noise, so I turned around and headed back home. Coasting down the next hill with my brakes on managed to make the dinging stop, so an executive decision saw me turn around and resume my trip.

It was a good trip, although I had to go a lot slower than I would have liked. The wetlands were surprisingly wet, and there was a lot of water over the track.

I skipped mapping the picnic area at the end, because it was flooded and I had mosquitos all over me before I even set my phone set to geotag. There was a girl sitting at one of the picnic tables studying, and I've no idea how she didn't get eaten. I had had a mozzie on my arm, one on my hand, one on my leg, and another two circling to find somewhere to land, and I hadn't even got off my bike yet.

So I zipped up the cycle route and was at Shorncliffe before I knew it.

The first park was also wet. It must have rained recently, because while the grass looked appealing and luscious, the stealthy ankle-deep mud sinks underneath it was testament to a different reality. I was in the middle of a massive muck before I even realised it, and had to get off my bike to push; getting my shoes filthy, and wetting my socks. I didn't bother finishing the park, and just left as soon as I found a gate.

I took some street names, tried to take some numbers too, but couldn't work out a decent system to do it on the bike. I think getting numbers is going to require a second pass whichever way I do it; there's just too much involved to get everything at once.

I worked my way around the neighbourhood, past the railway station and over to the bay. I got as far as the fish-and-chips shopon Jetty Street (doesn't accept EFTPOS) before my phone crapped out. “Not enough memory, delete some data,” it suggested unhelpfully before crashing my mapping application, deleting the last hour's worth of work, and refusing to run anything at all.

I was furious and disappointed, and generally gutted. My phone's been a bit touch-and-go since I started using it to map, but this is by far the worst thing it's ever done.

I found another general store that accepted EFTPOS, and bought a drink so I could sit out the front and troubleshoot my phone.

I turned it off and on again IT Crowd style, and it displayed the same message the very second it booted up. I deleted some applications I don't use any more (Python, Opera Mini...) and it still didn't work. I even deleted my maps off my MicroSD card, and it still wouldn't jive. I went to send a message to Twitter detailing my woes, and it wouldn't send — “out of memory. Delete some data.”

Turns out my supposedly ‟smart” phone isn't smart enough to manage text messages properly. I had about three-hundred SMS in my inbox, and another hundred in drafts, which I deleted as an exasperated last resort. Lo and behold, my phone started working properly again. After deleting every stray message on my phone, I could even simultaneously geotag and record trails; something I haven't been able to do for months. It seems messages were being loaded into ram on startup, and clogging memory other applications needed. It was a massive relief to get the thing working again.

Unfortunately by this time I'd worn down the battery to the point there was only about a half charge left. I'd lost most of the work I'd done already, so I was going to have to essentially re-do everything again aside the ride there.

I did all right, and managed to get a fair portion of the street names, as well as a bit of the cycle network, and some parks. My phone started croaking as I got to the parkland on the northern side of the peninsula, so I turned around and quickly re-did the roads south of the train line.

I got to the station, and the train was already waiting for me — one of the benefits of being the last station on the line I guess. I tried to record the rail trip back, but my phone gave its last gasp just before we reached the next station. Overall it was good timing.

When all said and done, I got a fair bit of data; but nowhere near as much as I'd intended. I'll have to head out on the train another time to finish the parks and street names I missed. It was generally a frustrating and overly unproductive day, and it really wasn't all that enjoyable.