I use Mapillary to upload photos to & to store in the OSM map (a JOSM plugin allows them to be uploaded + shown on the map) (that also allows them to be shown in these diary entries). Mapillary sends me weekly emails, telling me currently that I’ve uploaded a total of 724 photos & have a total of 741 views. Which is not a lot.

This was last week’s most popular photo:—

I think that my photo viewers need to get out more.

You will need to be of a certain age & British before the words “Bill & Ben” or The Flowerpot Men mean anything to you (both of those caveats ring true for me). In this next bit of garden/street art, the home owner in Highfield Drive, Carlton has decided that they prefer Little Weed to Bill & Ben:—

The final example of house/street art is from Standhill Avenue, Carlton and, as a silver salamander, is very different to Bill & Ben:—

… See full entry

The streets & civic boundaries (though not Parish/Ecumenical boundaries) are well sorted for Nottingham & district; well done SK53 & will_p for a fantastic amount of effort to create that (at least in my neck of the woods). That prior work occasionally needs a small trim here or there, but mostly my survey work is to add house number/names. It is useful exercise & gets me out of the house, but can be very boring. Fortunately, Nottingham folk are house-proud, love their gardens & are naturally creative, and spotting the results all helps to keep me awake. Here are some more examples from Standhill Road, Gedling:—

As I understand it, it was british Victorians that began to name their terraces as “Villas”, and to often include the start-date. There are good examples of this in a little terrace of 5 houses; I especially love the ‘bird’s nest’ below the number for Hazel Villa:

…but it’s the owner of Vivian Villa that has really gone to town with the pot plants:

… See full entry

Thursday, on a blistering 9 June (followed up by thunderstorms on the weekend, which is classic weather for England) and I finally get to do some surveying out of my Home patch.

My Home patch is Nottingham NG3 – just a kilometre from the town centre – and everything that I’ve surveyed so far has been more-or-less well known to me. Now, finally, I get to the end of that patch. Here is the proof, with the 1877 Borough of Nottingham Boundary Marker outside the Peacock Health Centre where Carlton Road becomes Carlton Hill (it is also a node on the map; you can discover what the node-number is in JOSM by using View | Advanced info (Ctrl-I)):—

This is where Nottingham becomes Gedling, and also where the NG3 postal-district becomes NG4.

My first houses were Carlton Hill & Standhill Road. I’m going to keep surveying the houses west across the hill & to the other side. I’m interested to see what I will find.

… See full entry

Whilst surveying on Florence Road last Sunday 5 June, I finally began to get some answers to a perennial question that has come up ever since I began surveying for OSM back in March of this year:—

“Why is that house number missing?”

Now, this may never affect you and, if so, I congratulate you on your mental stability. For myself, years of computer programming have deepened my natural state. Something like the situation in Florence Road can create the equivalent of a mental itch that I cannot scratch that can last for days or weeks, months or years…

The house numbers in Florence Road flow naturally from Porchester Road to Hillview Road; even numbers on the south-side, odd numbers on the north-side. There are additions here and there (‘48’ & ‘48a’, ‘19’ & ‘19a’) and some “teeth” missing (only a gap between numbers 20 & 26), but what causes me to stare hard is number 43, which has 45 on the up side (no problems there) and 39 on the down side. What has happened to 41! Whilst contemplating this, the lady owner pulled up in her car & gave me the answer.

Florence Road was originally part of the Earl of Carnarvon’s estate, and was divided out into Allotment plots + sold off for houses. Her house was built on 2 adjacent plots (thus originally designated for 2 houses but only the one actually built). She also mentioned that the nearby Punch Bowl was originally the Earl of Carnarvon’s Estate House and, in so doing, transferred all of my original itch (missing house number) to “Earl of Carnarvon”. Who he?

… See full entry

In the fewest possible words:—

1. Clothes — keep covered from the heat with cottons/silks
2. Hydration — small, continuous drinks of water
3. Salt ‘n’ sugar — water is not enough
   (surprise: Coke/Pepsi are ideal, if expensive & burpy)

It is currently 21:25, 20℃ & 68% humidity in Nottingham. It was far, far hotter whilst surveying this afternoon on Carlton Hill, and I was struggling to keep my head intact (losing too much salt via sweating).

The message about hydration seems to have got through to the young, but I’m not sure if the message on electrolytics (salt) has. Here is a tale from the 1970s; it was sufficiently dramatic that I learnt it for ever.

I was in my 20s, married with a young child, and the collapse in the value of the £ (GBP) + soaring inflation had meant that my so-called good job would no longer pay the mortgage. I found another job. That saw me canvassing for lemonade sales door-to-door 10am-4pm at this time of year in similar weather. I was guzzling lemonade throughout the day at an astonishing rate of knots.

The residential estate I was working was at the top of a hill, so the route home was downhill all the way. The vehicle I was driving was a Commer van, heavy in itself and still loaded up with crates of lemonade. My first intimation that I was not in a fit state to drive was when I drove smack into the back of a car parked at the side of the road.

I knew it was there, but had become transfixed at the wheel and my reactions were so slow that I hardly diverted away from the vehicle. The back of the car was written off, the Commer van was barely scratched. The folks that owned the car had just loaded it up ready to set off on holiday. Thankfully, no-one was hurt; just bent metal & disappointed dreams.

… See full entry

What’s this about Nottingham & Donkeys?

Close to where I live is what is (reputed to be) the steepest hill in Nottingham. It’s official name is Saint Bartholomew’s Road, but every local calls it “Donkey Hill”, and the name seems to go back some distance. It was apparently known as Bartholomew Stile Footway in 1882 (my house deeds show the first lessee at 24 June 1883, and it is likely that the first houses built locally date from then, or shortly before that date). It seems that Donkey Hill itself was a footpath surrounded by fields & allotments for quite some time. Finally, a St. Bartholomews Church (CoE high-church) was built in 1902 on Blue Bell Hill Road, in the area now known as Wickens Walk, and torn down as part of the St. Anns clearances of the 1970s.

According to the nottstalgia.com forum, “Bartholomews stile (or style) marked the edge of the borough of Nottingham”. Gedling & Lambley borders are further away today.

Freda Avenue is in competition as the steepest hill in Nottingham, and Lascelles Avenue (the next avenue on the same hill) is also called Donkey Hill by the locals.

Finally, I was surveying last Sunday 5 June at Hillview Road. Opposite where Standhill Road meets Hillview is a Footpath that runs between 64 & 66 Hillview and goes steeply down to Simkin Avenue, passing across Pilkington Road on the way. At the bottom of Simkin Avenue is the bottom of the hill, and dead ahead is Marshall Hill Drive which climbs the other slope.

As I walked down a lass was walking up the other way. I asked her if the Footpath had a name. She confidently told me it was called “Donkey Step”. What is it about Nottingham & Donkeys!

The line of Donkey Steps is a touch eerie:— the footpath itself is very straight, as is the line with Simkin Avenue & Marshall Hill Drive. Here is the view from the top:

… See full entry

• March 2016: I begin using JOSM + Terracer
• March 2016: my first bug-report
  Leaving “keep outline way” NOT selected + associatedStreet relation IS selected causes an exception when ‘OK’ is pressed
  (the developers have more important matters to attend to than Terracer)
• April 2016 - May 2016: (after each JOSM update, another bug-report)
  Leaving “keep outline way” NOT selected + associatedStreet relation IS selected causes an exception when ‘OK’ is pressed
  (each time, the developers have more important matters to attend to than Terracer)
• 5 June 2016: Debian Jessie Updates to 8.5
  (Debian updates 4 June; I update the following day)
• 5 June 2016: JOSM Updates to 10327
• 5 June 2016: JOSM Plugins Update to 32158
• 5 June 2016: the ‘normal’ bug-report, with an extra twist
  Leaving “keep outline way” NOT selected causes an exception when ‘OK’ is pressed.
  Leaving “keep outline way” IS selected causes an exception when ‘OK’ is pressed
  (essentially, terracer is almost unusable if relation is also selected )

It is important now to NOT select “keep outline way” within the Terracer dialog, as otherwise the original house is left beneath the terrace and, for some reason, it is now almost impossible to separate the two. In addition, previously the associatedStreet relation was correctly created for all houses. Now, many houses do not have it created (although the odd one does).

I find the combo of Building Tools + Terracer to be the best method for entering any house (detached, semi-detached or actual terrace) onto the map using JOSM, and the simplest to do so + create an associatedStreet relation at the same time. Now, each & every house causes a software exception.

Oh, spit.

… See full entry

Friday 3 June was spent surveying Norman & Morley Roads, both off Porchester Road, Nottingham NG3, and the previous days in the week were spent surveying Forester Road & Cherrywood Gardens + Porchester Road itself.

I live in NG3 but these lands are more foreign to me, since they are within the Gedling council district (my local council is Nottingham town). It is only a kilometre or so away from my home, yet feels very different. One immediate (and welcome) difference is that the signposts each have their postcode upon them. Very useful.

I also make use of the postcode lookup provided by Raggedred.net. The following URL added within Preferences (menu:Edit|Preferences|WMS/TMS) gives the postcode within each centroid within JOSM:

tms:http://www.raggedred.net/tiles/codepoint/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

… See full entry

It was Friday 3 June & I was surveying Norman Street, off Porchester Road in Nottingham NG3. The semi-detached house had a house-name on a piece of wood facing on to the street, but that wood was very old. Only 2 metal letters remained attached to it, 5 more were missing and, in spite of a fading imprint left on the wood, I could not decrypt the original name.

In classic programmer-mode (anal-retentive & fastidious) I decided to ask the home-owner what that name was, had gone around the corner to the side door & knocked on it. A young girl — she was probably 3 years old — was staring at me through the glass of a small window ⅔ up the wall at the right-hand-side of the door & had shouted at her mum. Shortly after, Mum opened the door.

I explained that this was the first time that I had been called an “old man”, and asked her to give me a few moments whilst I processed that fact. The young girl was mighty pleased by all this & was beaming all over her face.

(I’m not denying the facts; the government awarded me my State Pension 18 months ago, but it was still a bit of a shock)

Just before I finish, allow me to recommend surveying for OpenStreetMap as a useful pastime for other old farts like me. It guarantees some fresh air & physical exercise — and particularly if you live in a hilly district like NG3 — and is a good reason to meet & talk to other people (none as lonely as the old). Plus, improving the Map is good for everyone, so helps to offset those feelings of being utterly redundant.

PS
Mum did not know what was on the plaque, so adding a house-name to OSM was abandoned.

This is a strange one to have as a quandry:—

I’m surveying Porchester Road (formerly Thorneywood Road), Nottingham NG3 & have reached the corner of Norman Road / Porchester Road. Down the side of Norman Road is 180 Porchester Road (go figure), which is the Registered Address of F. Holmes & Sons (Porchester) Ltd.:

This chap is a builder (he has converted his former home into a set of 4 terraced houses which, let’s face it, is what a building contractor is likely to do, and the reason that his registered office is now tucked down the side of Norman Street). Now here is the quandry:—

I guess that a builder can be called a ‘trade’, or it could be called a ‘craft’, but regardless of it’s group-type, non of the sections in JOSM feature either a “Builder” nor a “Building Contractor”, so how on earth am I to enter this commercial activity?. It is difficult for me to believe that no-one has come across a builder in the previous 10 years whilst entering stuff into the map.

Nottingham Suburban Railway
Nottingham Suburban Railway, Part 2

A good deal of my Diaries seems to be one long, continuous set of brick porn as I detail my affaires with various walls positioned in different parts of St Anns, Nottingham NG3, England. Sadly, today is no different. Witness your surveyor as he gets up close & personal with the tattoo on a wall next to (what used to be) Thorneywood Station.

I began surveying Honeywood Estate last Sunday 22 May. The estate (and particularly at the upper end) is sat within the site of the former Thorneywood Brickworks (Nottingham Patent Brick Company). Robert Mellors, the owner of the Brickworks in the 1880s, was anxious to get access to a railway as to be able to ship his bricks to all parts of Britain. He was therefore one of the instigators of the Nottingham Suburban Railway (NSR) (I believe that St Pancras Station in London is faced with Thorneywood brick).

Here is a picture of the rear of the New Engine House Pub:

… See full entry

Why is it impossible to report spam in these diaries? A simple ‘report me’ link would do it.

Here are the latest examples (just in the last hour - all Chinese, naturally):—

osm.org/user/bobbleheadscustom/diary/38724
osm.org/user/holleywebc/diary/38715
osm.org/user/Dachzelt/diary/38713

---

Added 10:49 UTC 01:00:
I ran a website for 10+ years and am a moderator on stopforumspam.com. I know precisely what it takes to stop spam…

The simple method would be:—

1. Make a Report Link
   (at the backend send an email)
   (that will take an hour to setup)
   (mods & admins get an immediate heads-up on new spam)
   (once in place, do next steps)
2. Start blocking on combos of IP+email address
   (if a new user tries to create an account from a known bad IP + Email, then block it)
3. Start reporting IP+email address+username from spammers
   (note that this loops back to [1])
   (it means that the amount of spam on the site rapidly begins to fall to zero)

I’ve been giving JOSM a lot of grief. I think that this is because it is written in Java, and my webmaster experience has caused me to be deeply suspicious of Javascript (don’t bother writing; I’m well aware that they are different beasts).

A few days ago, whilst about to create a new terrace in City Heights, Mapperley, I selected a node in a building rectangle inside JOSM. It turned blood-red, which was perfectly normal. Then the whole screen turned the same colour, whilst the only key that the computer responded to was the electricity supply on/off button; that was perfectly abnormal.

To cut the long, horrible story down to size, it was not due to JOSM, but was rather because one of the two 2GB memory sticks that were bought a few years ago from Crucial had gone bad. When memory touched ~411MB the whole system died, and the entire screen was left painted the same as the last pixel used. (Added later: a phone call to Crucial and collect a Freepost address + RMA number to return & they will send two new replacements; that’s what a “Lifetime Guarantee” means, even though they were bought in 2011.)

Using memtest86+ caused the same shutdown. Removing the 2 sticks (leaving the original 1GB memory in place) removed the problem. Bum.

Fixing the problem is the easy part (a new Lenovo H30 from PC-World - strip out the useless Windows10 & replace it with Debian Jessie 8.4 & we are away) (why on earth am I forced to pay for Windows?). Moving all my stuff from the old computer to the new is the difficult bit.

How To Install Debian on a modern AMD Desktop Computer:

Some truly geeky stuff for anyone else with similar equipment & problems, to try to help; first, my target system:-

1. Lenovo H30 / Windows 10
   (is discontinued on Lenovo site; thus very cheap on PC-World)
2. AMD A8-6410 APU
3. EFI boot
4. “F1” to access BIOS

… See full entry

It is almost 8 weeks since I began mapping (21 March 2016). In my first Diary Mapping Thorneywood Mount I wrote:

One thing that keeps becoming clear is that I need Cards to id myself & give to others, plus, perhaps some literature to give to save myself 5 or 10 minutes explaining each time what the hell OSM is.

Thanks to a comment from LivingWithDragons I was able to get some funky little hand-outs from Andy Allan (thanks Andy), but still no personal ID. I was reminded of this following an unpleasant interaction with a little sh*t at Nightingale House, City Heights (the survey was made last Wednesday, 11 March 2016; I’ve consciously let 2 days pass to cool down, and to try to make sure that I didn’t swear whilst I wrote this diary; as you can see, I haven’t fully succeeded).

City Heights is built within the grounds of the old Nottingham Borough Lunatic Asylum (see the diary entry Nottingham Suburban Railway, Part 2 for more info) and has both new build houses in the lower parts and flats built within the original buildings erected for Nottingham’s lunatics.

This is Nightingale House (built 1880, this is just the front; there is also a long, long section behind & then another wing beyond that):

… See full entry

In Part 1, the current track of the Nottingham Suburban Railway (NSR) was traced from an extraordinary 9m high metal ventilation pipe above the Sneinton Tunnel, then as straight as a rifle bullet via the Thorneywood Station and the currently-inaccessible Thorneywood Tunnel to the Bridge that killed St Ann’s Well.

After my initial write-up on the NSR, I was astonished to be driving down The Wells Road & pass an old house with identical chimneys to the Thorneywood Station-house at 1 Porchester Road. I had never noticed that house before; surely the chimneys could not be a coincidence?

My chance came yesterday (Sunday 8 May) as my surveying took me up to The Chestnuts, a small cul-de-sac that is opposite (what turns out to be) the St Ann’s Well Station-house at 459 The Wells Road.

… See full entry

(‘Dead Kitten’ == the pink fluffy thing hanging from the left head-can)
(with grateful thanks to Nadeem at “Fabric House”, stall 244/245, Victoria Market, Nottingham)

This actually all started when my ancient Motorola L7 mobile died last Christmas; or rather, when the central bevel fell out from the O-ring, making navigation ultra difficult. The Moto was old – (2005) predating even the earliest iphone – but had originally belonged to my brother (now deceased) so I tried super-gluing the bevel back in.

In February 2016 I dashed to Newark to see The Flying Scotsman pass by & my attempt to photograph it faltered due to the bevel. That was the last straw. Discarding the Moto felt like discarding my brother for a second time, but it had to be done.

These are the steps to the Dead Kitten, and also what brought me to be mapping for OSM:

… See full entry

The trek ‘n’ trace that I did Friday 29 April 2016 included a section of the (long dismantled) Nottingham Suburban Railway (NSR), including the sole tunnel still available to view. I love steam trains, tunnels & hidden places, so this diary entry will be about the NSR in St Anns.

I use Mapillary to store photos taken whilst tracking. At first, the only way that I could display them in this diary was via my personal site. However, Mapillary support (support at mapillary.com) pointed out the Download sub-menu, and that allows a photo to be shown here.

On Carlton Road, a little east of the junction with Porchester Road, on the south side of the road, is a blue-brick wall that is actually the top of the NSR Bridge which previously carried Carlton Road over the NSR Railway line between the station at the north side & the track to Sneinton tunnel at the south side.

… See full entry

A patch local to me (now called Stonebridge Park) proved to be a white triangle on the map (Stonebridge Road at the base, Beacon Hill Rise on the town side & Saint Matthias Road on the 3rd side). It was part of the St Anns-wide redevelopment at the end of the 1960s. 50 years later poor, lost souls were still being discovered in the shrubbery. Like English versions of WW2 Japanese soldiers they had wandered into the new estates & promptly got lost. Most were quickly discovered & gently led out to be rehabilitated in one of the local insane asylums, but some went feral & survived only by being fed by children from the estate (I know this is true as I’m sure I saw a film about it).

Something had to be done. The council renamed the whole triangle of land & gave a contract to Keepmoat to re-redevelop the whole area. That post-dates our Bing imagery. I’ve tried to contact Keepmoat, but they have not returned my calls nor emails. I’ve had better success with the GIS department at the local council.

SK53 (Jerry) gave me a contact to a councillor who is Executive Assistant for Housing and Regeneration, and he passed my email on to the council GIS Team. I got an email back from Laura, saying that my request “sounds very interesting”. Nottingham Council have their own OpenData initiative, but the Ordinance Survey stranglehold on British GIS Data causes Laura to believe that they cannot release anything to OSM.

I spoke to Laura today, and she will approach the OS to discuss releasing info to OSM. I spent most of yesterday collecting info + links which I put in an email to her. I thought that others may find that info useful, so here is the content:

I hope to speak to you on Thursday 28 April 2016. Here is some background info + links on OSM relevant to the topic of your recent email to me, but first the section of that email possibly most relevant to this discussion:-

On 26/04/16 16:48, (GIS Team) wrote:

… See full entry

or,

Watch Out for the Middle-Class

I’ve been mapping regularly since 21 March 2016, but this is my first Diary entry since then. I’ll attempt to blog as often as I can from now on. Meanwhile, my most recent trace was uploaded a few minutes back. The longest vertical trace is Thorneywood Mount, starting & finishing at the bottom, at the junction of Donkey Hill†, Thorneywood Mount & Thorneywood Rise, and covering it’s entire length up to it’s junction with Porchester Road. The trace was made this afternoon as I gathered house number info, etc. from Thorneywood Mount & all streets between it & Porchester Road.

Most of the OSM street info for my neck of the woods (NG3:- St. Anns, Nottingham, England) seems complete, but not the houses nor the house number/names. Across the last month or so I’ve filled in most of that information for a section of St Anns bounded by Donkey Hill, Thorneywood Rise, Carlton Road, Saint Matthias Road, Southampton Street & Saint Ann’s Well Road. After the April 2016 Pub Meetup I reviewed the whole thing & decided to continue – it seems that I like having to deal with the middle-class chewing at my neck – and began to extend the mapping to the north-east of Donkey Hill‡.

… See full entry