Over the last few months I've been rendering out my own specialised tiles for a site I've been working on. I'm pre-rendering static tiles because I'm using a shared server and it's a lot quicker this way. The process looks a little like this:

1. Apply daily diff to osm file
2. Extract the area I'm interested in with osmosis
3. Import into PostgreSQL
4. Render with Mapnik using generate_tiles.py
5. Optimise with pngcrush and do some other things before diffing them and sending them to my live server.

This works fine, and there's really nothing wrong with the setup per se, except for the following two things:

1. It's slow.
2. I'm having quite a few street names get cut off at the edge of a tile and not carry over to the next one.

So I'm wondering if anyone knows of a better way of doing this.

It's my understanding that tilecache might work better, but I haven't found any indication that it will work how I want it to. So I'm wondering if anyone here has had any experience with rendering out static tiles, and what has worked out best. :)

Currently uploading GPS traces is too hard, and I've pretty much stopped doing it. D:

I used to have a system that automatically tagged and uploaded everything in a directory based on filename. That was before the 0.6 API, so now it doesn't work. My workflow also no longer lets me rename files so I can't easily tag them in the field.

I would *love* a tool that could calculate an average speed for a GPS file and tag it motorcar/bicycle/foot automatically, although I'm presuming this doesn't exist.

Failing that, what's everybody using to upload their files? I'd love to be able to set a cron job to upload & delete everything in a directory at 4 AM or something. Please advise. :)

I've had a backlog of GPS traces for a few weeks. The last few days I finally got through them.

I added a bunch of stuff from around my local area, as well as the nonames from my bike trip the other day (missed a few streets off the end of this one because my phone glitched and didn't save the waypoints. No biggie I guess.)

I also went and added some of the data from my trip out to Bribie Island with Matt (which I can't link because I didn't write about it.) We were going to follow the cycleway, but it doesn't really exist for most of the way, it's just road cycling and fast cars. But there's a few bike paths I got traces of, so it wasn't completely for nothing.

Looking at the Moreton Bay Cycleway signs, it looks like the cycleway might end up detouring out through Beachmere before heading to Bribie, so it may be more complete via that route. I'll have to check it out another day.

I've also been using the NearMap PhotoMaps to augment the OSM data in areas I've been but not traced. I've been especially focusing in Redcliffe/Deception Bay where I know the cycleway runs but I've never actually had the chance to trace. I've been focusing on cycleways because I'm hoping to use the data for a local project I'm working on. It's somewhat hush hush at the moment but if you ask me real nice I'll probably tell you what my plans are anyway. :P

I also took a while this afternoon to trace a bunch of new estate in Warner, out the back of Bracken Ridge. Holy MOLEY that area has exploded. It used to be an unfashionable backwater behind the industrial estate with not even a streetlight to its name, but in the last ten years it's become massive (without, I note with a hint of irritation, any hint of mass transit.) Keep an eye on the area for when Mapnik starts updating again, because I'm anticipating a whoooole bunch of new streets to pop into life shortly.

Yesterday I headed out to Virginia and the surrounding area to get some street names and get some exercise.

It was a pleasing run despite the hills. From Banyo I essentially headed out through the Downfall Creek Cycleway then along Ellison Road, up to Zillmere Road, and did some dithering before heading back to Banyo via Virginia.

Having lost my stupid laptop late last month I don't have Bluetooth to download my files off my phone any more. I also can't find my USB cable, so laziness has prevented me downloading the last few weeks worth of traces. I made a couple of edits from memory, but all of my waypoints are stuck in my phone for the time being.

It's an immensely frustrating position to be in, but I've been keeping busy OSMing from the inordinately brilliant NearMap PhotoMap aerial photography. You can see a bunch of stuff I've worked on recently in my home area, namely involving building outlines and the schools/universities in the area.

Having not woken up with the expected hangover and not knowing what else to do, I fitted the bike rack onto the back of the car, and drove myself to the new area north of North Pine River where I knew there were a bunch of un-traced streets.

I'm going to digress early on in the piece to exclaim how ridiculous it is that there's no pedestrian or cycle transport over that river. It's a major thoroughfare, the exact boundary between two councils, and an absolute arse to traverse via public transport. Something needs to be done.

There, with that out of the way I can continue unfettered.

I pulled in to the new shopping centre along Dohles Rocks Road, and parked my car in the far corner. It was a Saturday, so the likelihood of the car park filling up and my being a nuisance was slim. I prepared my bits and pieces, adjusted my doo-dads, and donned my helmet before taking a quick calibratory lap around the car park. I was pleased to find not one but two cycleways along the main road so I was absolutely spoiled for choice.

The area was all very familiar to me, since I'd previously surveyed it all not six months ago. Due to a catastrophic GPS failure which lost all my data, I'd never gotten the chance to update it, and due to the complete lack of access to the area by bike I'd never bothered to go back.

It was good the second time around though, because I got a lot more detail than I did in the car. I actually spent a good third of the time tracing footpaths and walkways which I'd obviously never bother with on four wheels. I even discovered a recently opened retirement village which I dutifully cycled around to get street traces.

By the time I'd finished the “Northquarter” estate, I wasn't quite ready to head back. Instead I pottered around the shopping centre at the top of the hill before deciding I wasn't particularly hungry, and headed further out into the older but nonamed Castle Hill estate.

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The Redcliffe OSM meetup was all right. It wasn't overly notable, but we had a nice lunch across the road.

The area ended up with some pretty sweet coverage, which I think was mostly done by John Smith and James Livingston. To be honest, I didn't do all that much in the area. Having cycled to Clontarf, I really didn't feel like doing cake slices. Instead, I nicked off up the cycleway because very little of it had actually been surveyed.

The result was about twenty kilometres (this is a figure I made up) of cycleways and cycle lanes through Redcliffe, Scarborough, through to Kallangur where previously there were none. I'm waiting for the cycle map to update, but I'm confident it'll look pretty good when it's done.

So I've been pretty lax on the OSM front lately. Haven't been riding, haven't been doing much at all. My grand plans to work my way up to Redcliffe on the bike have fallen flat.

Partially to blame: The broken bike. It's been in for repairs, and now it's fixed, but I haven't ridden it since. I'm planning on changing that today and heading out to Bracken Ridge to get some street names and landmarks that have been staring me in the face for the better part of six months.

I'm going to take the wetlands bike path out, because it's a cruisy ride north. Since I haven't been out for a while, I'll probably need to go at a pretty casual pace as well.

I'm trying to work out a decent route, but my inbuilt router can't work out whether I can traverse the train station + highway combination to get where I want to go. It looks like I can from the map, but maybe I ought to check it out in real life and do some micromapping of the railway station on the way.

In any case, the bikeway will deliver me almost the entire way to where I want to go. It may take me through a wetland and might be quicker to just go by road, but whoever (me) said that the cycleways in Brisbane (me) don't go anywhere? (It was me, by the way.)

I haven't been writing much at all for the last week, so I figured I'd kick off a day of smooth keyboard fingers with a write-up on the latest Sunshine Coast mapping party.

Both David and I were going to carpool with one James Livingston, who called at the last minute to say he'd just been in an accident and couldn't make it. I don't know if it counts as a contender for the glorious Mapping Accidents page, but it was certainly unfortunate.

I had access to a Getz to I nicked down to David's place and then we headed north to meet the team at Nambour.

It was a good ride. I may have been speeding at one point, but I'll vehemently deny it was deliberate. We made good time as a result, and arrived just before the designated meet-up time.

I had a chicken burger and the training girl behind the counter gave me two fries by mistake. I left them on the table for everyone to eat, and they went cold.

From there we divvied up the Walking Papers into impromptu cake slices, loaded up some of our geocaching attendants with data for them to do their thing, demonstrated Potlatch for Jeff Price and his Venturer Scout, and watched a lonely bag of fries go cold on the table. Awesome meetup.

After about half an hour we paired off and went our own separate ways. BillnCyndi the geocachers didn't seem too keen on the mapping aspect of the day, but John accompanied them around on a small practical demonstration run.

David and I drove out to what I imagine must have been the hilliest part of Nambour (quite aptly named Highworth.) It was amusing watching an exasperated David tapping frantically on his WinCE rig trying to get waypoints in real time as we drove past. Eventually he gave up, so we stopped to do some mapping on foot.

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