Merkaartor now unusable. JOSM is half-usable, but not for more than 15 seconds before hitting an issue that makes me waste 30 minutes trying-and-failing to fix.

I’ve spent the last 4 nights fighting these once-excellent programs to fix and reenter the mapping I did before– but they’ve both done things /by design/ that’ve made them unusable! ffs.

So.. I spent ~9 months personally cycling almost every street in Newcastle and the Lower Hunter Valley to name and detail.. and it’s all been nuked because Biogenesis’ yahoo-tracing wasn’t brought forward to the new database. Thanks a lot, Mate.

Go have a look-- the Newcastle is almost close to complete, with really only the Wickham and Carrington areas left to streetmap. It's obvious however that most of the areas that Bio, 'Mysterious German Carthography Student' and myself weren't responsible for will need a go-over survey to collect amenities, laneways, and such..

Merkaator users might be happy to hear that I solved the "Align Nodes" bug.. At the heart of it there was an 32-bit integer overflow issue. The Trac system seems to be down, and I've tried posting the findings and patches to the Merkaator mailing list, but in summary:

src/Maps/Coord.cpp:angle()
Problem code:
return sqrt((double)Lat*Lat+Lon*Lon));

Noob fix:
return sqrt((double)((long)Lat*(long)Lat+(long)Lon*(long)Lon));

I refactored and clarified some other code while I was working on it:

src/Maps/Coord.cpp:
double angle(Coord p1)
{
if (p1.length() == 0)
return 0;
double adjacent = (double)p1.lon() / p1.length();
if (p1.lat() > 0)
return acos(adjacent);
return -acos(adjacent);
}

src/Maps/FeatureManipulations.cpp:alignNodes():
void alignNodes(MapDocument* theDocument, CommandList* theList, PropertiesDock
* theDock)
{
[..]
double slope = angle(p2);
for (int i=2; iposition()-p1;
rotate(pos,-slope);
pos.setLat(0);
rotate(pos,slope);
pos=pos+p1;
theList->add(new MoveTrackPointCommand( Nodes[i], pos, theDocume
nt->getDirtyOrOriginLayer(Nodes[i]->layer()) ));
}
}

With now-working road alignment happening, the map of Newcastle is looking a lot prettier now. :-)

While poking at Tiles@Home, I seem to have labeled the Speers Point to Hexham area as 'water' (or maybe its idea of 'mixed' isn't the obvious..), and fscked-up the Osmarender layer. I changed IPs and voted those areas back to 'land', but the render updates might take a while.

In the meantime, MapLint has gone crazy in those areas as well. :/

...which would have to happen has I go to /finally/ test a non-busted version of TangoGPS to work on a non-busted OS version for the Openmoko. (Tell me again why 'Renderman' is some supposed Linux-programming GeNiUs? The OM failed as a phone, but at least it could be a PDA...and then E17/illume takes even /that/ away from you. >:(

Recent street mapping in Cameron Park (took about 6 hours to do..), Edgeworth (4 hours), the Cardiff CBD and Industrial area (3 hours), Cardiff North (3 hours), plus some finer details in Teralba.

Nearly all of it being done at night, mostly because I waste the day failing to motivate myself outside :) ... Tonight's Cardiff North ride saw my first confrontation with someone wanting to knowwhatthefsckareyoudoin??? ..with a newbie Harley rider practicing his turns. Still, it was less hassle than having some girls or kids standing in the way of the camera like what happens during the day.

Something to note: for those 3 hour late-night street mapping rides, I've been relying on my "Fat Hippy Lights Mk.III", wired to a motorcycle battery slung underneath the bike's top-bar. It cost about $40 to put together, including battery, and gets me about 7 hours of light from 12W Halogens. Link: http://www.users.on.net/~fathers/lightstoc.htm

Re: the previous mention about using a throat microphone with the scooter-- my MP3 player with mic-in (as opposed to audio-in) I discovered had died of old age, and no contemporary MP3 players have the feature. I'm piecing together a 'low voltage' preamplifier to take care of that. (Alternatively there's specialist voice recorders with mic-in, although they're disproportionately pricey..)

I'm in the midst of mapping out and street-naming the Cameron "McManson" Park developments north of Edgeworth at the moment. It's a fair slog-- tonight was my third 2-3 hour 20km ride-around, using a camera to geotag the street names & etc. One time I attempted it on the scooter, however the area has a lot of pedestrian+cycleways that would Be A Good Thing to include (the architects definitely had schoolkids wanting shortcuts home in mind!)

The street-mapping is being done at night, and I discovered a nice trick for taking photos of the streetsigns with a cameraflash. Normally, the reflective signs are always over-exposed no matter what flash/ISO/Aperture/etc. level setting on the camera. However-- I've found completely covering the flash with a finger lets just enough light through your entire finger to light-up the sign enough. Funnily enough, the sign now looks pink! :-D

Overexposed: http://hunter.apana.org.au/~cjb/Image/20090311-195923.jpg
'Blood Filtered Flash': http://hunter.apana.org.au/~cjb/Image/20090311-204549.jpg

After several opportunities to ride down to Sydney were all dashed on the weekend, I was left with a Bad case of PMS ('Parked Motorcycle Syndrome'..) and ended up wanting to see the areas I'd yahoo-traced around Morpeth. En-route, I noticed a large residential suburb that wasn't there in the imagery just to the south of the town, which I believe I managed to map completely.

While returning I found new residential expansion around Thorton (which I didn't complete), and mapped a few hidden streets and recent housing developments in Lenaghan and Minmi.

Saturday was a first real go at using geotagged photos (and a mountain bike) to collect street names and other items, in the Argenton and Boolaroo areas. It worked out to about 20 street names (and bus stops, petrol stations, post boxes, supermarkets, ...) in an hour.

What I could probably look into next is 'GeoNotetagging'-- for when I'm riding the scooter, and can't use a camera. I've got an MP3 player that has voice-activated recording, and with a throat microphone, it might be possible to rapidly note the street names and other items... if there were a way to include an accurate timestamp with the MP3, and then a way to review the recordings like geotagged images..

Started 'beta testing' the process for Merkaator/camera/eTrex/pushbike street and amenity naming, using the Wallsend CBD as the guinea-pig.