This is my third active day editing the map.

I started using JOSM, the hardcore standalone client to edit stuff. When using a mouse it certainly was a good deal faster than using the ID editor. Both have their advantages though.

Now I am tired, I think I have mapped a couple of hundred houses and our little village with some 11000 citizens are starting to look like something more than just some random roads and a steel mill. I’ll be very surprised if I don’t score high on the statistics page tomorrow. To bad I cannot find my username on the heat map thing, that would have been cool. Maybe it just takes some days before it gets there. I don’t know. I have also learned a lot making my work better. I also picked up all the shortcuts so I didn’t have to use the mouse more than necessary.

Somehow it would be easier if I could get more people editing in my little village. But I don’t have any friends here that I think has the time or interest to improve upon the map. I spoke with my sister who lives in some offshoot in the swedish countryside called Borlänge. If I could get her to start we could probably have a prefect city within days. She has a abnormal energy for OCD things.

My plan today was to render some OSM maps into Garmin images so I could have them on my GPS, but now I am so tired from editing. Maybe I could just edit like a madman for a week and then let the people who are skilled at doing these images do their job. We’ll see, I don’t like to take shortcuts.

It’s still just 16:48, and if I rest a little I may come up with the strength to edit some more. I soo wish I weren’t still suffering from this annoying cold, then I could be out walking and recording traces over small paths everywhere. All in due time I guess.

I notice my text does not have any flow and is kinda of jumpy, it’s like driving, don’t drive while tired, and don’t write while tired.

Now some well deserved rest :-)

About a month ago I started doing this thing called geocaching. I had heard about it from someone and was intrigued. We had one right outside our apartment so I took my family on a tiny walk and logged it. Since then I have continued to search for and log caches.

Because I am a geek and like gadgets I realized that I could buy a dedicated GPS instead of using my phone. So in true megalomania fashion I bought most feature rich thing I could find, the Garmin Monterra.

The thing is huge and heavy, not something you want to bring on a hike unless you have leg muscles like the ballerina Jean-Calude Van Damme. Apart from that though, I like the thing. It feels like I am back in the ninetieth when people were carrying around those huge phones, except I can not use mine for phone calls.

So now I end up going for walks all the time, to find caches everywhere. I also record the walks on my new toy.

So the other day I was going to checkout some maps for the device, OSM was of course on the table because who has not heard of that one. I downloaded an IMG file and put it on my device. Imagine my horror and chills going down my spine when the little arrow is placed in a mostly empty area with a single house standing lonely next to me. -This isn’t right! I am pretty sure I myself am located in a building, and that there are several apartment buildings in my area.

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I am new to this mapping thing in OSM. I started some days ago and I could not stop. It’s like a voluntarily OCD. At the same time it is kind of hard. There is a lot to learn, and I mean a lot. Unfortunately there is no simple tutorial on how to edit simple things in the one editor I chose, Id. And who would come up with the bright idea to name an editor id?? How do you google support for it? There are some questions popping up all the time 1. What do I call a regular bicycle/walking path? Is it path or foot-path or bicylcle-path? I chose foot-path for walking/biking and path for the things which people have made by cutting through the forrest. 2. How do I model residential area trees? And bushes? I ended up using landuse=grass to tag open grass fields.

I also noted that I could upload GPS traces, I did so with a couple but I can only access them on by one when editing the map. How do I access them all? I made them public but they do not show up when I add the public GPS-traces.

Well well, time will tell. Maybe it is just the OSM server that are working on something else for the moment.

Back to editing, a colorful map of my surroundings await :-)