I'm in Stalham, Norfolk, this weekend to help my Aunty with a leaflet to explain what the ZimBO Fund is about. She was so moved by her visit to Zimbabwe that she wanted to set up a fund in order to support some of the people, including two AIDS orphans - Benson and Oscar, hence the Zim-BO - she met there.

While here I thought I'd attempt to map at least some of the town.

Today I've been and surveyed several residential streets that make up one area (by my estimation, about one quarter) of the town. I think that's the fiddly bits out the way. The rest is basically long, straight roads with some (large) areas of green.

Unfortunately that'll have to wait. I got back to the house and went in for a quick drink. When I went back out to put the bike away (it was dark at this point) I noticed an odd squeek as it moved. Checked tyres - front was flat.

My Grandmother has a puncture repair kit so I won't be stuck for too long. Not quite how I intended to spend Sunday afternoon but nevermind.

Segments are no more!

I've been waiting for this change for a while. Ever since I started trying to do stuff with the data. Segments always seemed like an extra hoop to jump through. So in theory I should be able to get on with some of the things I've been wanting to do for a while. I shall see...

Just trying out the segmentless JOSM. There's a few residential streets I mapped once but never properly tagged. It was the mass of cul-de-sacs that got me. Having failed to photograph the time from my GPS for the purposes of syncing with the camera, I couldn't work out what any particular road was meant to me. I've now gone back to it and by trial and error have got most of it done properly.

I expect I'll have to check this area when I go out that way again. For now, though, the longer single roads towards the city centre seem a little more appealing.

On Sunday I had an equestrian vaulting demonstration near Shifnal. The location I was given was Wyke, near Telford. It's not far wrong, as Shifnal is near Telford. However, there is a Wyke and The Wyke just about 10 miles apart.

Searching Wyke, Telford on Goooooogle maps (and even Multimap) returns Wyke near Ironbridge. Which is where I went. By taxi. £14 later, I was in Wyke, near Telford. I soon learnt, by asking one of the locals, there was a riding centre at The Wyke, near Shifnal. Another expensive taxi ride later, I was there.

I finally arrived just in time (5 minutes to spare, enough to get changed and do a quick warm-up). The demo went very well.

OpenStreetMap would, of course, have returned (had they been in the database at the time) both Wyke and The Wyke for a search on Wyke, Telford. One point where I think we (will) have quite a useful feature above what Google does.

I yesterday went to pick up an athlon cpu to see about fixing my sister's computer (complaining of l2 cache error). Got home, went to take the old one out and found it stuck. A quick 'google' and I discovered these ones are apparently soldered in place. Crap!

Anyway, cycled to station, caught train to Dudley Port, did a few roads around where the seller lives (conveniently a fairly small circle road with a few cul de sacs coming off it). Back to station, got back to Smethwick, turned on GPS, did a few roads round there, got home, plugged in memory card, found my last trace (Smethwick) was 0 bytes in total. Argh!

Luckily the NaviGPS can log to its own memory as well as the SD card. Quick fire up of laptop (windows) to copy and I had at least something, although not filtered as my usual traces are.

Fun day.

I've gone off my bike a bit after finding the gears a bit awkward to change. Also had a minor fall after handle bars came loose while trying to do a tight turn in a cul-de-sac.

My main reason for not doing anything about it right now is that in 3 weeks I have the equestrian vaulting National Championships in Moreton Morrell (which will be, at least partly, in OSM in 3 and a half weeks). One of the main requirements of the sport is a high level of flexibility (in the sense of being able to lick one's shins). Unfortunately, the small range of movement involved in cycling means that muscle develops short in length, so reducing flexibility.

So in an attempt to get slightly better scores at this competition I'm not going to be mapping for a while. Probably.

Finally managed to do some mapping yesterday on my bike. I was quite pleased at how much I managed to do in the 5 or so minutes I had when going out to meet my sister. I got done what would've taken me 20 minutes by foot. Quite promising for future mapping trips.

As the bike is a folding mountain bike it had no trouble with a couple of steps I encountered when taking a 'short-cut.' Also as it folds it had no trouble fitting in the back of the car to get home at the end of the evening.

My next plan when I have a day spare is to take it on the train to Shrewsbury and get a couple of the cycle routes mapped. I think it's the NR71 that passes through the town along the river so should be a nice section to do.

I finished my job exactly one week ago and got everything moved back home on the Thursday. The following day, shortly after doing a bit of work on my computer (PSU blew up, replaced CPU fan at same time and now runs 30°C cooler!) my bike arrived.

The bike Haro DX folding mountain bike. I was put off a folding bike by the fact they don't seem particularly useful over anything that isn't paved road. Was also put off a full size bike by the fact I'd be limited with what public transport I could take it on. This bike seems a good compromise.

Although it doesn't fold up as small as most folding bikes it's still small enough that I can take it on most buses and it'll go on the train without the feeling awkwardness that has always accompanied my previous experiences.

Anyway, took the bike out for a test ride 'round the block' and soon after leaving had my phone stolen. It's knocked my confidence a bit but I'm sure I'll be out mapping on my bike soon enough.

Shrewsbury looks a bit bare. I think I might end up filling in cycle routes there next week.