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Claudius's Diary

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More woodland and an anomaly

Posted by Claudius on 25 May 2009 in English.

Across the road from the local shops is a whole woodland area that needs proper mapping. I started yesterday by doing a few footpaths. There is an anomaly here which I still haven't figured out. Google Maps shows a road in this area called Koivulantie but I can't find it. At the same position in reality there is only a footpath leading to a small group of houses. What's even more strange is that the ending -tie generally indicates a major road. I wonder if this is an easter egg? If not, it certainly seems to be an error. In fact, Turku's own map at http://opaskartta.turku.fi/ shows only a footpath with no name.

Location: Koivula, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, 20740, Finland

Power line

Posted by Claudius on 17 May 2009 in English.

I followed the pylon trail towards the west and found the end of the line after only two more pylons. It ends in a small building which I expect is a substation. I continued along the path and ended up finding the sea quite by accident. My device tells me I walked a total of 5.8km over 90 minutes.

Location: Katariina, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, Finland

Mistakes

Posted by Claudius on 17 May 2009 in English.

The work I did yesterday was rendered overnight (in Osmarender -- no idea what has happened to Mapnik!) -- and I discovered I had set some wrong tags on a couple of roads. So I have corrected it. I have to be more careful about how ways get accidentally joined together.

Ha! Mapnik has finally started to show the stuff I added in the last week.

Location: Harittu, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, Finland

Halfway to Huhkola

Posted by Claudius on 16 May 2009 in English.

So much to map, so little time. This morning I had another scout around the woodland and refined the perimeter. This woodland is becoming an obsession. After lunch I went back to the little bridge and continued down the path towards Huhkola. Got about halfway and decided to stop because it may have already been done. Just found that it hasn't been done so one day I might continue along that direction.

Location: Kaarningon pumppuasema, 1, Harittu, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, 20740, Finland

Woodland perimeter

Posted by Claudius on 15 May 2009 in English.

Decided to try and finish my local woodland area by tackling its perimeter. Went for a scout around it and created a boundary which is quite accurate about 75% of the way around. The western boundary is a bit rough for now until I have time to get right in there and do it properly.

Location: Koivula, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, 20740, Finland

Woodland and shops

Posted by Claudius on 14 May 2009 in English.

On the way home from work I had a wander around the local shop area and went home across the bridge. I was then able to map the shop block and join the bridge to another mapper's existing path. This path appears to extend even further to the north-east so mapping that might make a nice day out sometime.

Location: Koivula, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, 20740, Finland

Started using JOSM

Posted by Claudius on 12 May 2009 in English.

I very quickly found that Potlatch is rather limited. I'm thinking about adding some bus stops that are currently missing on my route to the centre of town. Not being able to easily import waypoints makes this difficult to do accurately, so I thought I would try JOSM -- and I'm impressed! As a test I added a few benches and a section of power line near my home. I do have a bit of a penchant for pylons, and it might be a nice day out sometime to follow and map a power line, if possible.

There's a bit of woodland that I walk through to get to the shops and it was completely unmapped so I thought I'd have a go at adding it. I added the woodland footpaths and the area around the shops at Harittu/Koivula. I found that someone had put POIs for the shop, pub and ATM there already, but they didn't match my track so I moved them, which I guess is OK since I was tracking with good satellite coverage. I'm not sure how to map the actual woodland area since it's not easy to gather the required data, but I'll have a go another day. Also added a suburb marker for Harittu itself.

Location: Koivula, Skanssi-Uittamo, Turku, Turku sub-region, Southwest Finland, Mainland Finland, 20740, Finland

Missing roads

Posted by Claudius on 10 May 2009 in English.

I found OpenStreetMap this morning and noticed the outstanding level of detail in the centre of Turku, a city which tends to be overlooked by other map sites and datasets. It came as a great surprise, then, that on panning down to the Harittu area, I found that the actual road I live on was missing from the map. I grabbed my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx and went out, made a track, uploaded it and made my first contribution to this extremely cool site.