Hello everybody. I'm writing today to tell you that I've got one monster-massive GPX file that needs to be pored over.

It's this year's accumulated traces from my parents' caravan Australia-touring expeditions, and since OziExplorer is such a difficult application to use, I've only now found out how to export the damn track. You might notice it's all in one big blob.

In any case, I can't go through the entire thing on my own, and indeed I couldn't be bothered having already been through a fair portion of it, so now it's your turn. Check out my edit history to see which bits I've been working on, and have a look if there's anything you'd care to chew on.

Edit: on second viewing, that track's showing up in the ocean. I've absolutely no idea how that happened, but I'll have to sort it out later.

I did some more tracing around Rockhampton, last night. I figured it would be a good test of my newly working Yahoo layer, and if the data's there why not make the most of it?

I maybe doubled the suburban street coverage, and then extended down south west until the high resolution maps ran out. I'm not sure how well aligned they are to reality, but it's better'n nothing. Someone local can go through and finish them off. :)

Here's some comparison shots I took because I thought it was cool.

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After my last few days of field mapping, I figured I'd spend today catching up on my data entry. I finally got WMS fixed on my Ubuntu 9.04/JOSM setup, so I've been doing satellite tracing and whatnot that I've neglected since it first broke in April.

Things I've done today include:

• Tracing some extra bits and pieces over the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, and getting that more up to scratch. Now the only thing left to do is trace a few of the footways I've doubtlessly missed, notably one that runs along the Western boundary.


• Straightened and tuned some landuse boundaries I'd guesstimated around Boondall. Added the greenway/common area, and fixed some bits and pieces.


• Added the shopping/retail complex where Gympie Road splits into the M3 (Bunnings, Aldi, and other places I've not mapped.)


• Added some railway stations based on memory and the satellite maps. Carseldine (added the third line, and some platforms,) as well as Nudgee, through to Sandgate with both platforms and additional line corrections.


• Added some landuse designations around Boondall based on satellite maps. I had to stop myself here or else I'll end up covering the entire of Brisbane. At this point I think landuse=residential is probably more practical as a "I was here, this area's done" tool than anything else.


• Fixed up some more Narangba, from the satellite images. This area's skewed, so it's difficult to align correctly. Will have to work it out later.

Overall, it's been a productive afternoon for OpenStreetMap.

Starting a health kick, I decided to hike (read: powerwalk) to Boondall and do some mapping. I always surprise myself how comprehensively I'll cover an area, just by going for a walk.

I ended up spending a little over three hours on my trip, but a lot of that was spent walking there and/or waiting for public transport to take me home. There's only about eight streets I missed, but I'm thinking a daytime trip (night time is a bit creepy) through the greenway where the cycling paths are, and I can get most of those streets because they back onto it.

I'm planning a few trips out to that general area, because it's within a convenient walking distance from my new abode. I might eventually get around to fixing up the entertainment centre one day, too, because it also needs some love.

Bring on the mapping!

I've finished!

Well, I've finished the little bit I was focusing on, anyhow.

I've spent probably one hundred years working on the area (actually I only did about four trips out there over a period of about six months) and now it's finally done. I missed one street, but I can probably get my nephew to grab the name of it for me sometime.

I did get streets, cycle ways, foot paths, parks (and park names where applicable) and I estimated some stream/drainage routes. They're not super-accurate, but I figure the entire greenway turns into a river when there's any kind of heavy rain anyway so it doesn't matter that much.

I didn't get lot numbers, because — let's face it — at some point in the future we're going to inevitably acquire and import a database of street numbers from somewhere, so any half-arsed work in the interim probably isn't going to make that much difference. I'm a bit jaded, like that.

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I took a few trips out to Darra to do some mapping over the last week.

The first time it was a nice sunny afternoon until I got there. Then it became a rainy, blustery, truly miserable evening. I got caught under a shelter in a park I didn't get a chance to map, waiting for the train to stop.

Not content to get caught out just the once, I decided to push on after the rain stopped. In the stupid dark, I proceeded to traipse down badly lit streets, mud-slicked construction areas, and eventually found myself quite unexpectedly stranded once more; this time under a really decrepit bus shelter.

By the time I got home, my jeans were covered in silty mud, and my demeanour had been thoroughly drenched by the rains. My hardware was all right, because it was only really wet enough to make everything *feel* miserable, not actually penetrate my backpack.

The second time around was great. I covered the north side of the train line. Aside some guard dogs in an industrial area (scary turds, them,) blocking access to a cycleway, and a particularly large spider dangling over the footpath (even scarier turds, them,) it was a good night.

It's not a particularly interesting area, but now it's seemingly complete. That extends the little corridor of completedness out a little further along the Ipswich line.

I've yet to add my changes from tonight, but you can be certain they'll be finished by midnight. [Edit: I lied. I forgot. I got caught up. It happens.]

Went a little bit crazy recently with the mapping. It's an awesome hobby, and it's a dangerous distraction from real life.

In the past few days I've got a few more streets and names in the little pocket of Narangba I've been mapping. I've also gone through and marked out residential areas and leisure areas along the greenway in that area too.

I've added a load of residential zoning in and around Banyo, mostly from memory and local knowledge. I went as far out as I could before I started getting too fuzzy on the details so I'm not concerned there's many mistakes, especially looking at somewhere like Toowoomba where the landuse=residential has been applied liberally and without bias.

I've also been upgrading the railways with more detail. I say "upgrading" but I'm really of two minds as to whether I'm mutilating them or doing a service for railfans everywhere. I'm a bit biased in that I love the intricate details, of multiple rails, platforms, underpasses and whatnot that I'm adding but I'm not entirely sure if it's healthy for the overall map. No other map goes into such minute detail as individual lines without a good reason, so maybe in the future when the map data starts getting massive, this can be another cycle-map style spin-off, leaving the main render with a simpler version? I don't know.

I also went for a little walk around Toombul with a pal of mine and we got the same footways that David Dean added just days earlier. The minutely updated/noname tiles aren't updating any more, so I didn't know it had already been done when we set out. Still, I got some extra streets that didn't exist on the map (another living street too, second I've found in Brisbane!) and filled out some other small details.

And I just uploaded my backlog of GPS traces. I kind of doubled up on a few older ones by mistake, but it's far too much effort to work out which, and delete them manually. I ought to write a script to, though.

I got roped in to travelling to Caboolture to see a friend this afternoon, and it was the first time I actually got the time and incentive to do some on-the-ground OpenStreetMapping done.

Caboolture is one of those awkward areas right on the edge of satellite coverage. The imagery available is skewed terribly, and as such nobody likes tracing the roads and whatnot. It's not much fun having to line them up again at the end.

In any case, I got some nonames, had a sausage roll, and then tried to get some bearings on the railway station.

I'd love to be able to micromap the area, but as it was even my traces were inaccurate. I'm not sure what the problem was because I usually get almost accurate reads, but tonight everything was just wonky. I've only now found out that I can use A-GPS to augment my GPS data over the network, but I've yet to work out how to do that.

It was really an awkward time to be running around. It was dark, I had a load of cash in my wallet that I forgot to put in the bank, and my laptop was in my backpack. A recipe for no end of failure in the dark reaches of Caboolture. I'm glad I didn't get mugged, really.

I tried to do some more mapping today, but it looks like my Nokia (6120 Classic) is kind of dead. It did the same thing it did the other day — crashed with an "out of memory" error and erased my work — so I figure I'm either going to have to work out what's causing the problem or fork out millions to upgrade my handset.

I started taking street names in the little pocket of un-mapped Algester. I noticed a few of my waypoints took, so I'll work out what I've still got, and go back another time. I'm still massively annoyed at Symbian, Nokia, and the universe in general.

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.

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I'm finally getting around to uploading my backlog of GPX traces that I've been avoiding with fervence. Now that I've learned how to save trails properly, I should be able to record better tags and whatnot, but all these old trails are likely to be mistagged and possibly even overlapping each other.

They're better late, battered & soiled than never, I guess. Someone will be able to use them for reference at least.

I've also been collecting street numbers around my parents place, as I'm house sitting for the month and there's little else to do around here. I've worked out a good system of geotagging low-res photos of letterbox/house numbers. It works surprisingly well during daylight hours, but once twilight sets in my phone's rather average camera starts to blur, making it difficult to snap photos and walk at the same time.

I took a trip to my sister's place today, since she somehow managed to junk her brand new week-old Windows installation thanks to a dodgy malware removal. I decided to go on my bike so I could take some time out and get some street names. I badly misjudged how long that would take.

I ended up spending the entire day out there zipping to and fro around Narangba Valley, recording trails and taking waypoints. Things I learned today:

1. There's a really comprehensive cycle network around Narangba Valley. I'm envious, it's a very good system, if a little dangerous for reaching high speeds.


2. I really need to get my bike serviced, it's making some horrific noises.


3. My phone doesn't have enough memory to have my track/waypoint logging software, my geotagging software, and my camera application open at once. It helpfully closes things when ram gets sparse, and doesn't tell you it's going to nuke anything you haven't saved yet. Symbian S60; gotta love it.


4. I can simply select "New Track" from the "My Tracks" menu of my track logger to start a new track, rather than shutting the thing down and starting it up again — this has been the bane of my very existence for so long. It pains me that user error has resulted in so much wasted time.

There's still a massive amount of data missing from the area, but I got an awful lot today. I reckon another two or three trips ought to finish the area bounded by Burpengary Creek, Oakey Flat Road, New Settlement Road and the train line. The problem is that the satellite imagery is so bad and the area is so new that I keep finding new patches of development I have to trace manually. It's difficult on the bicycle (although worlds better than walking,) though with the exception of a few pockets I think I've got most of it at least traced.

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Started feeling pangs of guilt for not having done anything OSM for a while, so I pulled out some of my old track logs that I hadn't done anything with yet and had a go at the Caboolture area.

I somehow managed to lose a bunch of geotagged photos over the last month; but going on memory, the satellite imagery and the trails I recorded I managed to patch together a fair bit of the area. It's horribly incomplete because a lot of the street tracing hasn't been finished yet, but I've been picking away at it for some time, and after these changes have uploaded I think it'll start resembling something more like a map.

I had a go at Narangba too, tracing some nonames, and adding some details from memory. They will need to be adjusted when I can get some more accurate GPS data, but they should be reasonably close (and certainly better than nothing.)

In particular I focused on cleaining up the railway lines and adding overpasses, platforms & parking areas at stations. Again they're probably not entirely accurate, but the rails are more so than they were before thanks to a track I took weeks and weeks ago.

Now everything's uploading, and on my parents' awful 256k upstream, JOSM is estimating it'll take an hour to complete. I hope the new API fixes this, because it's one of the least fun things I can think of right now, and there's absolutely no reason it should be that slow.

I've got a bit of a thing for rail. It's easily my most favourite form of transport, so I got a little caught up tidying the suburban rail corridor north of Brisbane, and replacing the jumble of single line & messy platforms with something more representative of what's really there.

I kind of didn't mean to get so caught up, but once I started, I got all the way to Brunswick Street station before the lines started making sense.

I've been going on the Yahoo imagery which is pretty low resolution, as well as the public GPS traces which are also pretty low resolution (it's hard to get a good fix inside a train, the windows are pretty thick.) I've been updating stations with platform details, as well as updating the junctions according to both memory and common sense.

The actual rail corridor(s) between Banyo and Brunswick Street now have the right number of lines, and as best I can tell from experience also match up with the physical train routes. At the ends of the areas I've done, I've left a note on the relevant node explaining what happens to the line from there, you're welcome to continue the work along if you'd like.

There's bits I just don't know about, such as the exhibition line and the giant great mass of rails near Bowen Hills. I'm positive there's junctions I've missed, but until we can get either higher resolution satellite images or some GPS data from parking trains, I think this is probably the best we can expect.

I took the morning off (because I have that kind of responsible work ethic thing going... And I freelance,) to put my feet where my words were, and get back into some serious mapping. It was pretty good, too. I managed to cover a fair bit of the sparse spots in Corinda and Oxley.

I woke up at a little before seven, had a banana for breakfast, and read some feeds before lathering myself with sunscreen and setting out. It was about half past nine before I set off.

I got to Chelmer station and set off, and I'd hardly got down the street before I realised I'd way overestimated my ability to cover ground -- It wasn't just street names I was collecting, it was landmarks (like crossing, benches, bus stops [although I've no idea how much the new QROTI data has changed this,]) as well as buildings (like churches and halls,) and I even took a fair few street numbers to plug into the database as well. I took none of this into account, so by the time I was a quarter of the way through my scheduled journey, I was ready to pack it in.

I ended up taking a revised route that got the immediate area around Corinda done. It was a good (I mean really good) walk, and I picked up a lot of meta that had been missed in the areas that had been done before me. I'm particularly interested in getting the cycleways down, because that's been one of the most useful maps for me to date.

I just got through the door, filled up my water bottle, and finally collapsed on the couch. I haven't downloaded any of my waypoints yet, but that's the next task.

I've been meaning to go out and get some nonames data around Corinda, since it's quite nearby my place. Unfortunately it's been far too hot recently, and today it's expected to get to get up to 34 degrees. Ugh.

Other than that I've been pretty inactive here. I've done a bit between Kallangur, Narangba, Caboolture and Bribie Island, as well as bits and pieces about the place. I haven't gone on any dedicated mapping trips though, these were all incidental.

I've got my bike all set up and ready to go, so I'm thinking after I've done the areas along the train line, I can expand my range somewhat. There's a fair bit of noname data to collect south of where I am, and a fair bit to the east out near Woolloongabba (which I just marked as a suburb.) This all depends on how fit I am (not very) and how much it cools down (not much) in the future.

I got a buddy of mine to grant license to some of his GPS tracks from a recent trip to Moreton Island, so tonight I've been updating the previously barren map with some really high quality data.

I don't have any names or much metadata, but I've been able to map in a lot of tracks, as well as some beaches.

That's where the problem starts. You're permitted to drive vehicles on the beaches (with a permit,) but there's not really any way to indicate that for routing purposes. I've tried to come up with a solution, but it doesn't seem to render nicely on the minutely updated tiles, so I'm not sure if it's an ideal solution.

So far I've come up with:

natural

beach

surface

sand

area

yes

access

permissive

highway

residential

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how else to tackle this, so if you know of any existing cases, or better methods, don't hesitate to let me know.

Went out with Hugh and David tonight and we did a mad traipse around The Gap. I think the aim is to complete the entire area so we can say “it's done!” and leave it at that. It's very close to finished, thanks to the awesome work of those two.

I also did a little bit of work through Macgregor, Robertson, and Coopers Plains. I essentially took a really awkwardly long route to the train station and took landmarks and whatnot. It felt good to get out and actually do some solid work on the project again, although when I finally updated the map I was disappointed at how little difference it actually made in the area. I'm planning a few trips back to see if I can't finish it off.

I'm also writing an app that will eventually be able to automatically tidy, tad and upload my GPS traces. I know there's a few solutions that already exist, but mine's better. Originally I'd written it for a learning experience, but now I've got the learning part out of the way I'm tidying it into a fully-fledged application. I'll make sure to note here if I ever release it.

I've been doing a few different things on the OSM front recently.

Most excitingly, I got my new Freedom Keychain GPS on Monday. I've been using it about the place for the past week and it's a really awesome purchase. It's even smaller than I'd imagined, and reasonably accurate too (though it really needs a clear view of the sky.) I did up a review of it on my blog which I encourage you to read if you're in the market for a new bluetooth unit.

I also got bored one afternoon and decided to trace some Yahoo imagery around Rockhampton. There's an awful lot of really high quality data already there, but a lot of areas are missing as well, so I hope my contribution is a at least a little useful for the locals working on the project.

I also went out with David Dean again today and we got some data around Kedron. I managed to lose my glasses at the beach a few days earlier so most of what I did was limited to wandering around vaguely and bludgeoning into spiderwebs. I'm a little disappointed for cancelling an outing three days earlier with Awesm for that reason, because it would have probably been all right anyway.

I've also in within the last week or so mapped out most of the Nudgee Beach area, as well as the Kedron Brook Wetlands bikeway which runs from there to Toombul. I've been meaning to do that for quite some time and while it's feeling good I've finally done it, there's another bikeway to the north that is taunting me now. I'll have to plan a bike trip another day.

Other than that I've been doing little things; it's addictive, Open Street Mapping. I can't get enough.

Finally finished the little patch of emptiness in Nudgee. I went around today and traced the area with my laptop & GPS. Got a few bus stops and tried my hand at footpaths, cycleways, benches, parks, water bodies and water fountains. It's surprisingly easy with Potlatch — I don't have JOSM on my machine at the moment.

I started putting in the cycle way that follows the road out to Nudgee. I put in the areas I know for sure just follow the road, and Ill expand on them later. I was going to do it tonight, but my laptop totally died for some reason. It's reinstalling as we speak.

It's been a good day for Open Street Mapping.