Hi @Piskvor

It is fully possible. I’m a Mod at SFS & it operates a crowd-sourced system that stops 99.9% of spammers dead. The human-mediated spammers can usually get through, but only once. The problem is that it will need custom-built changes to the Diary pages, and my time is solid with surveying whilst the sun shines.

@jonwit “needs a few shingles”: it looks that way, doesn’t it? It may be that you are being deceived by the astonishing levels of humidity that are common in this island, with everywhere within at least 70 miles (113km) of the sea. Last week’s 93℉ (34℃) heat has gone & we are currently down to a more-normal 61℉ (16℃) and 77% humidity. That encourages growth of all sorts of odd stuff on the roofs & in the gutters, mostly as a thin film but sometimes as ‘tufts’ (my house is 1883 & the roof was therefore Welsh slate; my next-door neighbour has indeterminate green tufts at the base of most of her slates). The gutters normally get cleaned out, but the roofs rarely do. A contributing factor is last century’s Clean Air act & thus the loss of tons & tons of sulphur from the air. The local concrete & stones now show lichen growth that was unknown in the 1970s.

A little more on GPS Traces:

If you click through my user-page to my traces you will be able to get a pictorial view of what they look like. Clicking on one of the ‘more’ links will give a pictorial time-track of movements.

Hi @asdofindia

You wrote: > Although it does have an option to “record GPS traces” I haven’t explored this yet and do not know what it does.

GPS traces are the only way to map lines (such as roads) and areas (such as houses) in the absence of aerial imagery. Even if you have good satellite imagery, initially I found it a reassurance to see from the trace that I was on the right path. Having said all that, I no longer use the GPS traces at all (although OSMTracker (the App I use) auto-records a trace every second). A secondary value is to be able to look back afterwards & see where you were working at a particular point in time.

I would agree with @Jedrzej Pelka: if you have good Satellite Imagery, then fix the roads before going in the field, and double-check any changes once you are on the ground.

Just in case it may be significant or helpful, here is the GPS info extracted from the JPEG of that Benchmark (IIRC ImageMagick is required to get the identify utility under Linux):

~$ identify -verbose 2016-07-11_13-34-10.jpg | fgrep exif:GPS
    exif:GPSAltitude: 40/1
    exif:GPSAltitudeRef: 0
    exif:GPSDateStamp: 2016:07:11
    exif:GPSInfo: 720
    exif:GPSLatitude: 52/1, 57/1, 592327/10000
    exif:GPSLatitudeRef: N
    exif:GPSLongitude: 1/1, 5/1, 356760/10000
    exif:GPSLongitudeRef: W

Thanks @Warin61 & @andy mackey, useful as always. Since the Wiki advice is NOT to use type=benchmark NOR survey_point:type=benchmark (essentially, avoid type outside relations) I used:

man_made=survey_point
benchmark=yes

Unfortunately, and as you can see from the photo, there is zero reference or altitude information, which reduces it’s utility a lot. Still, you always remember your first, do you not?

Re: Staffordshire Bricks (aka Tamworth Blue Brick):
see the brick porn within Nottingham Suburban Railway, Part 3

Hi @Matt

Gosh, 7 years… well, I’m a youngster of 3 months and I use terracer every day (am using it right now on semi-detached 30s houses in Ivy Grove, Carlton). I like it a lot, naturally think that it could be improved, and am serious about offering to maintain it — I have a couple of decades of programming experience & am recently retired, so have both the time & desire to tackle it.

I’m sure that uberterrace is wonderful, but the difference is that terracer is easily available to every JOSM user via the standard F2 list of plugins, whilst uberterrace is not. If I’m going to devote my time to it — and time, in the end, is the only thing that we all have to offer — then I want to work on something that everyone will be able to use rather than some niche product.

I’m happy simply to be given co-developer access to the source. However, I’ll send you my email address as a message and, if you want to explore letting me breathe life into your baby, we can take it further.

Hi @SomeoneElse
That word “blame” is the key feature here. I tried my hardest with this diary entry to make a simple factual entry, drawn from a statement from a leading developer to my latest bug report:— ‘there is zero point in making a bug-report on a plugin since most plugins are not maintained by the developers’.

Now, there is lots that can be said in response to that fact at the end of the previous paragraph, but when I make a bug-report there is zero blame from me towards the developers about the fact that there is a bug in the program. I’ve done lots & lots of programming, including a little open-source programming, and I know that bugs are part & parcel of programming. However, my experience is that I have received masses & masses of blame for the fact of making these bug reports. In fact, people have gone ballistic about it. And I’m sorry, and I know that it is a pain, but it’s not my fault that the recent changes in JOSM have decreased the viability of the terracer plugin. I’m just reporting that fact. And seriously, if you cannot handle the reports, go and find something else to do, because you really mustn’t be dealing with the public.

I’ll make an offer, and I’m serious about it:
I’ll take over support of the terracer plugin. Give me a username/password (whatever) so that I can administer the source, and perhaps some suggestions to get going. Then leave me to it. I’ll tell you in a week or two if I’m up to it, or not. Then (if I am up to it) at least one plugin will have a maintainer.

Further edits made to the Lagoon, following a call to Severn Trent (they are a remarkably helpful set of people; I even had an engineer call me today following my initial call to see if he could help further). The edits have not yet been uplifted, as there are a mass of houses that I’m adding in Second Avenue & nearby streets following another survey yesterday.

Having planned to possibly survey yet more streets in the locality I went to view it in the map and, godammit!, Flood Lagoon 5805 shows up on the map as a blue-infill area (just as Andy’s did). I checked it using Potlatch and there has been zero changes to my earlier changeset. The fact that it renders now means that all of @BushmanK’s earlier objections become valid, which is most annoying. However, all of that will need to wait until Monday.

Yes Warin61, this Tesco does have a toilet that can be used by customers. As it happens, there is a very large cemetery opposite the Police building, and the Police are next door to Tesco.

Oh gosh, @andy mackey, what a cruel link; you are saying that the non-show is all my fault, whilst yours shows wonderfully. Damn, damn, damn. Now I need to phone Severn Trent again to discover what the nature of the basin is. Ah well. Many thanks for your link.

It is “advice” & not “advises”; ‘advice’ is both singular & plural, all at the same time. But then again, according to you, Mr @BushmanK, that is just my personal rules.

Hi @BushmanK

Yes, well; I’m fully as capable of ultra exactness, if I want to be. However, the older I get, the more I begin to value my time, and my leniency grows.

1. I do not personally know whether the specific function is infiltration, detention or retention. You are welcome to contact a Severn Trent engineer to discover which it is, and add the tag accordingly. I’m not going to bother, and particularly as the basin does not even show on the map.
2. Oh joy! Changing all my phone numbers to International format. Oh! bounteous joy overflowing!
3. Description remains. I’m a “Belt ‘n’ Braces” man. My trousers very rarely fall down.
4. It did not have a name before I named it. I’m sorry that you do not like it, but I was the father, not you, so there. Oh! and “Flood Lagoon 5805” is as close as it gets to an ‘official’ name. In addition, try to use Capital Letters & proper curly quotes when you refer to my baby, if you do not mind.

You are welcome to survey the site & change the boundaries if you wish. Personally, and in particular, remembering that it does not even feature upon the map, I’m going to leave it exactly as it is.

Thanks for your interest and comments.

Thank you Simon & Andy. Checking Tag:landuse=basin seemed to hit the mark on the description, if not the tag value (‘basin’ is not exactly the obvious word to describe a Flood Lagoon):— > An area of land artificially graded to hold water.

On an inspiration, I left “Tag:ref=5805” in place and added: “Tag:name=Flood Lagoon 5805”. It now both shows in JOSM (though not in the standard map - boo!] and can also be searched for.

@escada: thanks, escada, my bad. I’ve changed it to the range, and it will be uploaded shortly with some more little amendments to the parking areas + recent discovery of a boys/girls football changing rooms.

In fact, with a little exploration you could have sourced my error yourself: the Sports Centre link has a mapilliary link and, following connections to that photo would have brought you to another photo with a schoolboy-error as I photograph the opening hours + myself + the rain (English June weather is almost permanently “sunshine&showers”, as the folks at Glastonbury Music Festival are discovering at this moment).

@Jean-Marc Liotier: what do they call these little figurines in France? I cannot seem to find any info on them.

@escada: thanks for your kind comments.

spam spam spam

I’m not sure of the actual z-level used, but the following link is a pdf that includes a current map derived from UK Ordinance Survey data:

Gedling Council Street Guide

Coincidentally, this link is included within my latest diary entry (posted the one before you!).

Hi Warin61

I’ll defer to what you say about clothes, and I’m sure that your words on acclimatisation are accurate. However, to talk about salt just in terms of ‘taste’ is truly to miss the point. There is a reason that Roman soldiers were paid in salt (Latin: ‘sal’, hence ‘salary’) and a reason that elephants travel miles up into the hills just to get minerals (salt) from some rocks because nothing in their diet provides it. Re-hydration with just water is worthless and, in some circumstances, can be harmful.

I’m content to let you have your wild extremes, Warin61. Living all my life in this little island I’ve been royally treated like the story of the 3 Bears: never too hot, never too cold, but nicely moderated. Suits me.