The capture card I bought for my surveillance was, according to vendor, not compatible with Windows, so they had formated the computer (without consulting me, only my wife), and installed Windows XP. Since I have as much experience setting up a Windows Server as maintaining an engine (almost nothing, I know how to change air filters and oil, so I can set up a simple ftp or web service), there are no way I can set up additional services now. (If you wander what I am talking about, ready my two previous entries).

At first I was set to reformat the entire server and install Linux again, than I thought about Linux on a Stick. Now I do not know what to do. I want to set it up on Linux, but since the vendor insists it will not work in other than Windows, I am not sure what to do. At the moment there is a completely passive wlan card, that was intended for remote maintenance. I want it to work in Linux, but the vendor said that the card supported for Linux was 4 times more expensive.

The wlan card inside is not supported by linux, so I use ndiswrapper to get it up and running, and I have read similar drivers are available for video caption, so I want to try it out.

But maybe I will let it all wait until I can afford buying a new computer. The system now is a really outdated Pentium4 system, with IDE hard drives. A 80GB IDE harddisk costed the same as an 350GB S-ATA, so the future is definitely to change the disks to S-ATA.

Well, that means that the WMS/TMS system, and the map updates will have to wait, how long is still not decided.

Yes, I managed some detours today. Gathered a few more tracks that will be entered soon. A few more roads in Guarapari, though that is getting increasingly difficult, Novo Guarapari, and Meaipe. The funds have been low the last few weeks, so there have been little chance to explore, and my wife's computer have been with problems,the result, she occupy my computer. The result of all this, little editing. A very little editing.

Hopefully the problem of my wife's computer should be fixed over the weekend. At the same time I hope that the computer I have made disponible for my maid(nanny/servant/cleaner) and the server for the alarm/surveillance should be operational as well.

I am thinking of making some sort of service on the server to generate updated maps of Espirito Santo for use on various GPS units, and maybe a TMS/WMS service for map data to import. I have some PD maps in PDF and .dwg formats, and havn't found any workable sofware for Mac or Linux, so I have to dive into think tank for solving the import.

If I get this import going, Vitória and Guarapari will quickly be completed. After that I will head for Divino São Lorenço, and the municipals in between. In time the whole of Espirito Santo will be imported this way, one municipal at a time. I have at least one more on the team for this import, maybe more will join when we have the ball rolling.

Guarapari is coming along quite well. Or rather it have come to a point when I have to make plans and detours to gather more GPS tracks. It is almost impossible for me to drive somewhere and get on a new road without starting to make detours. Centro is now as complete as I can get it without gathering street level data on foot, same also for Parque Areia Preta, Muquiçaba, and Praia do Morro. There might be a few roads in the other suburbs, but it is hard to say as the maps I have to compare with are of a bad quality (old data, inaccurate data, or plainly wrong). The other suburbs are places I generally don't go, either because they are very far off the roads I use, or because they are somewhat dangerous to enter.

For gathering data further off, we plan for weekend trips, we have a few in the view, but no concrete plans at the moment. But we will most likely go to Devino São Lorenço, Mimisa do Sul and Saquareem in the near futurem that might tie in a few more roads.

I am trying to figure out how to import data from AutoCAD .dwg files. At the moment I am sitting on a very up to date .dwg drawing of Vitoria, and I guess I can get the same type of data out of Vila Velha and Guarapari too. I will start a project to gather this type of data from all municipals in Espirito Santo as soon as I know how to get it from the .dwg to osm. I will focus at one municipal at a time (and since it is 84 of them, it might take some years to get through, though I have one other on the team at the moment. We might need more hands on the team.

Last Saturday my wife and I, and some friends, decided to go to Venda Nova do Imigrante to eat polenta and listen to rock. But we headed out with a slight miscalculation. As the traffic into Guarapari was terrible (this weekend is holiday in Brazil), we decided not to fill up the tank in Guarapari. My plan was to fill in Viana before we start climbing the mountain, but could not find any suitable petrol stations along the main road, and no obvious signs to one.

"Well, I should have enough to get to Marechal Floriana, so thats no problem" I thought, and I was correct in that, though the warning lamp for low fuel level lit about the time I passed the entrance to Domingo Martins. In Marechal I turned left into the first fuel station I saw, which was closed (bummer), and asked where the next one was.
"About 43km further, or you can go back do Domingo Martins (5km)" a guy said.
So I hurried back to Domingo Martins, where I found two fuel stations closed. The situation was starting to get critical. Could I go 50 km to get the one they where talking about? We stopped infront of Policia Civil and asked for help. It turned out that we knew the same people, the officer on watch at policia civil and us, and they helped out as best they could (2 liters of gasoline transfered from one vehicle to out car) and called up the road to find out if there was another fuel station in Marechal. He came back telling us that there is a 24h post just 3 km from where we turned around. The fuel from the police held until there, and we got the tank topped up. Now we could continue to Venda Nova, and eat polenta.

I will for certain put in the fuel stations, and a few more roads in Venda Nova, Domingo Martins, and I have also a lot of more tracks for Guarapari. There is also a new road bridge in Vitoria, and I have tracks ready to correct that road.

On the way from Guaçui to Guarapari I try to avoid BR-101 without too much detours. I have found a route I like, but I have to follow BR-101 for a short while.

Yesterday, shortly after entering BR-101 between Cachoeira and Rio Novo, traffic stopped promtly and I could see emergency flashes far up ahead. Shortly after I stopped a HGV almost rammed me in the rear, so I decided to zig-zag a little up the file of stopped trucks to get further from the end of the line. Shortly after I started ahead tree other trucks almost collided with that trucks in the rear.

After waiting some time, a slow movement started on the queue (without any traffic coming against us, and after a few minutes we passed the accident site. A car had been totally crushed by an oncoming truck, and there was without doubt deaths. The queue for the other direction was completely halted, and after passing that we started to signal to oncoming cars for them to slow down in time not to make matters worse. A little after oncoming cars signaled us as well, so we thought it might be an accident further ahead, so when we passed an intersection leading to an alternative route we left BR-101, the result is one track from Rio Novo to Marataiz.

Tomorrow I will drive down to Macae for a 4 day course. On Friday we probably continue to Rio de Janeiro to visit ITAMARATY and the General Consul of Norway for various paper work.

The days in Macae will let us explore a little there. The through road I added 2 weeks ago will be connected to the rest of the road network, at least one hotel will be added and a little more. I do not know how many amenities I will be able to add, as I will be on the course from 0700 to 1800 (or later) every day.

It is a possibility that I will go to the neighboring cities, such as Rio das Ostras for a night meal.

We have still not decided on where/how to sleep over in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, but most likely Niteroi/Sao Goncalves/Mage, as finding a good pousada in Rio when having no directions is difficult, and hotel is expensive.

My wife have started practicing to get her drivers license. That means I have to find roads with little transit. Let my wife drive a bit with instructions from me, and get back in the house.

Finding these roads makes us discover some roads I would never find else. Today we headed to the contorno, but took the right hand direction instead of the left hand. The right hand direction is a motorway, and my wife didn't want to practice in 110km/h, so we headed up a dirt road instead, all the way up to BR-101 and back.

Tomorrow we will look for another road to explore.

Last night I had to park the car a little away from the house, because of *^&% tourists parking full the street, and while we where away preparing for the party some visitors parked in our drive way (I wouldn't have been able to fit our car in that gap anyway, but I could have parked in the garrage). I forgot my GPS on the dash, switched on, with the charger cable in place. When returning this morning the car was as hot as a owen, the display of the GPS contorted, and I was afraid it was f***ed (technical term). I switched off the GPS and put it in the gloves department for some time and cooled the car down with the A/C. Later it worked as normal. Remember to hide the GPS from the sun when you park for the night.

I have collected some new trackpoints. Some have been edited and uploaded, some will come in the near future.

1) BR-101 - Macae - Arraial do Cabo (Main roads already entered)
2) Guarapari - Piuma - Iconha (The road have been entered by somebody else, but the intersections have been updated)
3) Guaçui (Visited some places I havn't been before, new roads will be entered)
4) Cachoeira do Itapimerim (A few new roads will be entered)
5) Guarapari (Diversions because of road work give a few more tracks
6) Vila Velha (My son was hungry, we had to find a supermarket, new road to be entered)

Have also noted a few facts to be entered, such as maxweight, maxspeed, lanes, turning restrictions, etc.

More to come

I have heard that all Brazilian (federal, stately and municipally) survey and statistical data is by law in the public domain. I havn't seen this law, but are willing to put it to the test.

The Brazilian community have already started on a process of importing IBGE data. This is the large data set from the Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute. Some have also contacted a few municipals to get survey data files donated to prepare imports of municipals.

I will of corse try to get the same, will start with Guarapari, and after that take a few other municipals where I feel I do the mapping. But I have a bigger idea. Something that can turn into a extremely huge import.

I would like to get my hands on the hydrographic surveys done by the Brazilian navy devition for hydrographic survey. If I can get this, than all navigational bodies of water in Brazil can be imported, along with all ports, lighthouses, buoys, coastline, beaches, water depths, seabed materials, and much much more.

First step will be to get the survey datas, that might take quite some time as I will need to find out where to send the requests.
Next step will be to analize the data to find out how I can get the possition data out of it, and how things are coded.
Than all possitions needs to be converted to WGS84.
Than I need to make import files in OSM format based upon the various datas, and split into chunks.
Than each chunk of each import type must be cleaned in order to remove all duplicates.
When that is done, I can run it through bulk_import.pl or some other bulk import program.

I hope that some of the cleaning can be done in some sort of graphical interface, such as JOSM.

If somebody have experinces, scripts, tools, or hints that can help me along, feel free to leave them here, or contact me in a private message.

Ok, the plates are on the car, and we have had our first weekend trip, up to Devino Sao Lorenco, Guacui, Dores de Rio Preto and Espera Feliz. Some of the people we visited lives up (up to now) unmapped roads, and we had a sidetrip to Caiana for a local festival, so a few new tracks was gathered.

One of the reasons to choose Dores de Rio Preto is that we used the weekend to baptize our son.

I have also started on tracking more around Guarapari, today I had a trip up to Camarugi (had hoped that I could pass there and back to civilization another way, but that didn't work out). Camarugi seems to be a cur-de-sac on the map.

The problem now is time. I have to prioritize time with my son, as I will go away for 6 weeks of work later this week. That makes editing of tracks, and copying tracks from the GPS difficult, as it hardly can be combined with spending time with a 1 year old kid.

It is finally in the garage, though still without plates. Plates will come next week or so. At the moment we are looking in to getting an audio system, and a GPS mount installed. Future planes is to build my own Navigating Map system using OSM maps, but that is still in the early planing process. At the moment there are no money to buy the necessary hardware.

But most importantly, that big black monster of a car will help in gathering more GPS tracks. The rest of Guarapari will be mapped, and we are now more free to travel to whatever corner of Brazil we want.

By the way, I pay about the same for this car as I would have paid for a Fiat Uno in Norway. I get much more car for the money here in Brazil than I ever would in Norway.

* Also to be installed, a baby seat for my son
* DVD entertainment system (could be part of the future navigator) so the kids can watch their favorite cartoon in the back seat on long trips.
* Extra 12VDC power outlets. Would like 2 in the front and one in the back seat.
* Possibly an 12VDC-110VAC inverter. Our laptops all need more than 12V to operate.

Planned local mapping:
* Muquicaba - Camarugi - back to some main road
* Trevo BR-101 - Boenos Aires - Rio Calcado - Barra Branco
* Some roads in Barrio Porto Grande
* Road up to Lua Azul in Novo Guarapari
* Atleast one road (in addition to main throughroads) to all Barrios in Guarapari

As I still am waiting for money to be released so I can purchase my car, and I still have no bike, and little time to walk down unfamiliar roads, I am trying to enhance the data that is available in my area.

For some reason, Yahoo doesn't work in my JOSM (only get a red banner with exceptions cast), I have to skip to Potlatch when tracing Yahoo imagery, something I don't like much, but as soon as the data is entered I can download it in JOSM and verify it.

I have also started fresh with entering addresses, having a note book dedicated to OSM, where I have sketched several roads, and take notes as I go around. I also try to mark special features, and add from memory.

But hopefully I will get loads of more tracks when I get that car, I already have plans of continuing a few artery roads, and as well drive up to a few villages around Guarapari.

Another possible source for new tracks, as I might get executive driver for my next crew changes at work, I might gather tracks between Guarapari, Macae, and Arraial do Cabo. With some luck I can also ask the driver to take a few roads with less traffic, so that I can complete ES-060, or even find new roads. These executive drivers usually knows a few short cuts.

It is time to start using a different medium for surveying my area. Centro is as complete as I can do it with GPS and a car. I need a bike (to cover cycleways), and I need to start making a series of notes to add house numbers/house names, add amenities that I don't regularly use, find street names that still isn't in. Other items on the list cover such as:
* Zebra crossings
* Light signals
* Lit/unlit streets
* Turn restrictions
* Photo boxes
* Access restrictions
* CEP (postal codes of streets)
* Public phones
* Post boxes
* Gas station fuel types
* Restaurant Cuisine types
So with a dedicated notepad, a car and a bicycle, Guarapari will be even more set more on the map.

I have just started to add turn restrictions in and around Guarapari. I am adding them from knowledge as I do not have the opportunity to actually survey or correct the area at the moment. Much of this are at the moment done on an offline copy on spare hours at work, and I guess there will be a big update later (for some reason contact with OSM server is coming and going, more 0.6 hickups?)

As I started adding addresses (only two this far, and one of them need correction), I have decided that it is about time to actually start adding them. To do so I need to print out a few sheets of local maps where I can note down house numbers, street names, CEP codes, house names, and whatever are used in house numbering. I do not know if I will use interpolation, or only single numbers (most apartment buildings have unique names, and therefor need a separate node anyway)

No, I still don't have my own car, so I am renting one again. The reason? Visitors. We need to get some more around, and during these 3 weeks we have this car I will try to get some more survey work done.

This far I have done the way to Praia Castilanho and and some missing roads in Guarapari Centro have been done. A few additional roads also have been done. Further during these weeks I will have a trip to Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte, and some other places.

I have also started to look for a bike with a baby-carriage, side-carriage or something similar, something that will allow me to do bicycle survey together with my son.

In the middle of this, I am still struggling to set aside money to buy a car. A dream would be to have a homebrew street navigator utilizing OSM maps as well as gathering GPX tracks, liberating my handheld GPS for footways, cycleways, and tracks.

The Brazilian community is well under way with the IBGE Import that started after IBGE confirmed for us that all their data is in the public domain. The main work is done by two persons, while the rest of us in the community are participating with ideas and views on the mailing list.

The Brazilian community have really awaken, and more people are hooking up to OSM to participate in this. I think the more data we get in, the easier it is for new people to tag in. Some people are also actively participating by tracing Yahoo airal photos from Europe or other places in the world (I know Harry Wood have done this a long time, but he is almost a part of the Brazilian community as his missus is from Sao Paulo).

The plans for Y-NOT is further shaped, and I am now trying to get the first code down, so that I can start to test the functions I want.

I got an idea for my own map software. Something to complete what I feel missing from existing software, and keep it fully cross platform. The name of the software is (at the moment) Y-NOT (pronounced Why Not), an acronym for You Need Only This. You can soon read more about Y-NOT on my project wiki.

Last Sunday I visited Fortaleza da Santa Cruz da Barra in Niterói, I have added some details about it on the map, such as the access road to the fort, the limits of the military area, the parking lot and the restaurant. I might trace the walls of the fort later. There are a few other forts I'd like to visit, but that will have to be another time. They are marked from Yahoo images at the moment. Maybe others visiting Niterói can assist?

Coming Sunday I will pick up a rented car and prepare for the journey back to Guarapari, if time and weather permints I'll ascend Corcovado (the famous Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro), the road up there was impossible to track from areal photos. I will also complete BR-101 through Campos, making the route from Feira da Santana to Angros dos Reis complete. I might also detour to get Cabo Frio and Macae on the map. If time permits I will also pass to track the missing bit of ES-060, though I have a feeling that this goes out.

Sitting onboard a vessel in Niteroí port waiting can be a bit boring. The vessel I work on have had to much dead time now, and we are running out of jobs to do while waiting for the next operation we are going to do offshore.
The problem with all this waiting is that I cannot go ashore with my GPS to survey some of the streets here in Niteroí, both because one officer have to be on the bridge, and because my GPS unit is back home. If this is going to continue than I will start bringing unit to work, so that I can get at least one street by a random stroll.
But in the mean time, I'll browse around the map with JOSM, looking for obvious bugs to report to OpenStreetBug, tracing rivers and lakes with landsat, OpenArealImages and Yahoo areals, and participating actively on the wiki (something I never have time for at home).
Another thing I can do from work is making relations, and have at the moment focused on Brazilian highways and borders. The problem there is that most highways still are incomplete and that we still are missing a lot of border data to draw complete borders around all the 26 Brazilian states. If somebody can get hold of a border data set we can use, please let me know, I will gladly help getting it in.

As I work all around the world, I get a chance to survey areas where I normally wouldn't go. Vigra is one such. Travelling to Norway, my main intensions will be to visit friends and familly, but work have brought me to Vigra, where Ålesund airport is located, about 30 minutes by car from the city.

During evenings off I have had the chance to go for bicycle rides and walks, and bringing my GPS in a pocket gives me tracks to put up on the map. Before my job here is completed for this time, my goal is to have the main road from the tunel at Valderøy to Vigra Airport, the road from Valderøy via Giske to Godøy (there is another tunel, so I'll probably stop at the tunel entrance), and some other local roads put on the map.

...I bought a GPS and started to record streets around Guarapari, than it became a few trips up and down to Vitoria, and than a few trips to Guacui. It even became a trip to Rio de Janeiro and back. My main goal is set to get Guarapari surveyed and put on the map, but I'll also look into connect as many places within Espirito Santo as I can, and get the main routes connecting Espirito Santo with Rio de Janeiro, Minas Girais and Bahia states