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OJW's Diary

Recent diary entries

DWG polls

Posted by OJW on 7 June 2012 in English.

On 7 June 2012 11:13, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Dear OSMF members, > I would like to hear your opinion about > A. Suspected Copyright Violations > Such a policy could for example be one of > * “Data for which no credible source is given in the changeset or on request > by the contributing mapper is subject to deletion.

Good to see that the most extreme option being considered here is still one step less than Wikipedia’s “delete anything for which we don’t have notarised permission from an identifiable individual who has proven their ownership of the work being contributed”!

Automatic POI->Building?

Posted by OJW on 1 March 2012 in English.

For a moment there I thought JOSM had done something surprisingly cool. I can't make it happen again though so maybe I was dreaming...

When you draw a building using the Buildings tool/plugin, and the building you create contains a POI node such as a pub or cafe or restaurant or bank... should JOSM apply those POI tags to your new building and remove the node?

EGPD (but no EGPS)

Posted by OJW on 6 March 2010 in English.

Labelled a few bits of Aberdeen Airport that I happened to notice while visiting. The whole area has good yahoo images but doesn't seem to have had anyone from OSM to do the street names.

There's another terminal at Aberdeen Dyce operated by CHC Scotia, but I'm not quite sure which building is their main "departure lounge"-type place

However, Longside airport osm.org/go/e6nYUnw seems to be completely missing. As the backup airport for lots of helicopters travelling to aberdeen, it might be useful to map that sometime.

Location: Dyce and Stoneywood, Aberdeen City, Scotland, United Kingdom

Blank cheque

Posted by OJW on 28 July 2009 in English.

"CloudMade reserves the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of these Terms at any time without notice to you. All changes shall be effective immediately."

so how about just change the terms to "you must donate all your proprietary data to OSM", wait for their website to download another tile, then inform your customers of their new obligations ;)

trying the cloudmade style-editor

Posted by OJW on 25 July 2009 in English.

Following-on from Nick's talk about how OSM (and specifically cloudmade) allows highly specialist maps, I've been trying to create an aeronautical chart as a cloudmade layer.

Now, some aspects of this are never going to be possible in a generic map editor, and I'm not expecting it to rotate symbols according to magnetic variation or any of the other weird stuff that specialised software would do.

Similarly, some data is never going to be available in OSM, e.g. airways and approaches that only exist within proprietary datasets and can't be seen on the ground (so to speak ;) We're not yet encouraging people to leave their GPS on during airliner landings!

However, it would be nice to have a map layer where you can browse airports, so if you want to buzz around Kent in your flight sim, you can easily see "ah, I want EGMD to EGMH", then zoom-in and see the runways available.

Maybe a few navaids could be entered into OSM by particularly keen mappers (and they could even listen to it on the radio to figure-out the frequency/ident without consulting proprietary charts!)

For display in the helicopter cockpit you might want something that looks like a low-flying chart, with power lines, television masts and tall buildings in bold red, that also shows wildlife sanctuaries, gliding clubs, heliports, etc.

So, onto cloudmade editor, and see how much of this is currently possible. Other options include Kosmos (which is very good at this sort of thing - osm.wiki/Kosmos_AirNav_Rules - but only works on smallish OSM files), or running your own Mapnik (which I intend to try once I figure-out wtf my PC's postgres password is set to...)

See full entry

Wretched hive of scum and villainy

Posted by OJW on 18 May 2009 in English.

We were in Milton Keynes at the weekend, for the mapping party. During Saturday night, various components were stolen from my bike needing £95 of repairs, and on the same night, the OSM banner was stolen.

Meanwhile, the police had enough free time to stop and question one of our surveyors for the crime of photographing a bus stop...

Location: Central Milton Keynes, City of Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

New houses

Posted by OJW on 17 July 2008 in English.

So I show the OSM website to someone at work today, and their first response is "my street isn't on the map"

This is weird - the person lives in Bedford which is within range of at least 2 OSM mappers. So what went wrong?

Well it turns out that they live in an estate that was still a muddy construction site just 2 years ago when the area was last surveyed. Since then it's become a housing estate with loads of dodgy modern houses in various stages of construction.

So I went to visit and made a map of the area. But watch out -- something which is a cornfield one day may be someone's house the next day, and if you only visit the place once you might miss it...

(use osmarender layer to see latest maps, while mapnik is still showing old maps)

Location: Brickhill, Bedford, England, United Kingdom

Just back from the cycle ride - we aimed to get part of the the National Cycle Route 51

osm.wiki/index.php/Bletchley_to_Bedford_cycle_ride

Hopefully we have recorded all of that cycle route which exists. The round-trip distance (for me) was 65 miles. Shaun McDonald is (as of 8pm) setting-off for his return trip cycling back to Bletchley, so wish him luck getting back okay.

Location: Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, Fenny Stratford, Milton Keynes, City of Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

Wind turbines

Posted by OJW on 30 April 2008 in English.

Looks like the wind farm has rendered on potlatch.

The proposed tag: power=generator; power_source=wind doesn't have any effect yet

osm.wiki/index.php/Proposed_features/Power_plants

Using man_made=power_wind works on mapnik

Neither are shown on osmarender layer - this would be quite useful, as you could see them without waiting a week for mapnik

I think the location might be this one?

http://xahlee.org/Whirlwheel_dir/livermore.html

Location: Alameda County, California, United States